Report of round 5 - CCT 2008

Thus said Teimur Radjabov, whose King’s Indian, like last year, keeps scoring big points in Corus. It is the verbal description of the familiar Chess Informant sign for ‘clear advantage for black’. Today in a Benoni structure against Pavel Eljanov, black equalized quickly, and was wise to give up his bishop pair after white’s 20.Nf1. White’s downfall came first when he embarked on the wrong plan with 23.Rae1?! - 23.b3 and 24.Ra2 was correct. He then opted for 24.f4? (see diagram 1), which undermined his central pawn structure, and ultimately badly weakened the d5 pawn. Radja won that pawn, and as he was working on trying to cash in on his advantage, enjoyed another mistake by Pavel (32.Bf2?), losing a second pawn and the game. White had to have tried the rook ending after 32.Qxd5 Qxd5 33.Rxd5 Rxe3 34.Rxd6 Re2, where black is of course much better, but white can fight a bit more.

An unfortunate day for Loek van Wely. Shakhryar Mamedyarov’s irregular Sicilian gave him nothing, and the Dutchman was playing somewhat provocatively (8...0-0-0) to try and play for a win. In the tactical battle that ensued, white managed to maintain the equilibrium, played his moves quickly,and even get a bit frisky himself with 25.b4!?. Loek felt Shak was bluffing, and erred with 26...Bb6? (26...Rd8! was necessary and good). On move 32 white missed the strong 32.Qg5!, and after his 32.Qf5? (see diagram 2) black should have tried 32...Qg6! 33.Qxg6 hxg6 34.Ng5 Rf6! Black seems to hold after either 35.Rde1 Be5! or 35.Nh7 R8xf7 36.Nxf6 gxf6. In the actual game, Loek went down in flames after 32...Qh4? when the strong white f-pawn and white’s centralized pieces, decided the issue.

Boris Gelfand did not yet recover from his previous round’s loss, and went down in quick fashion against Veselin Topalov. “It wasn’t Boris’ day today” -- Topalov. He was slightly worse in a Petroff, took a pawn in the middlegame, and had to return it to maintain the balance. Instead, in a playable position, blundered horribly with 26...Qe7?? (see diagram 3) which lost on the spot to 27.Ng4. A tough start for the Israeli GM.

Michael Adams versus Vladimir Kramnik tried a contemporary Nimzo-Petroff. The most noteworthy point of the game was on move 17 (see diagram 4), when white could have tried 17.h5 “with a sharp game” -- Kramnik. When he opted for the game’s 17.Bb5, piece exchanges were imminent, and on move 25 the players decided to call it a day.

Judit Polgar - Peter Leko was a typical 12.d3 Marshall gambit, where white quickly gave her extra pawn to complete a risk free development. Almost by force, queens were traded, and white took on d5 to give black an isolated pawn. Eventually, after some manoeuvring, white had nothing better than to capture the isolated pawn, but black’s bishop pair was very agile, and provided enough counterplay. The point was shared on move 35.

Levon Aronian could not achieve any advantage today versus Vishy Anand. Their Semi Slav duel followed known theory, and not much new happened when white came up with a peace offering, which black accepted.

The Ruy Lopez exchange between Vassily Ivanchuk and Magnus Carlsen saw a lot of pieces being traded. When a temporary sacrifice of the e-pawn by the Ukrainian chess genius lead to a symmetrical, single rook ending, a draw was agreed at once.

In the Grandmaster B group, French Etienne Bacrot is scorching the field with an impressive 4/5 score, beating Dutch Jan Smeets with the black pieces, also winning the expert prize of today(awarded by GM Ivan Sokolov). Top seed Ivan Cheparinov lost his second game of the event, this time to local Erwin L’Ami.

The battle between the clear leader Arik Braun, and the cellar-dweller Dennis Ruijgrok in Grandmaster C ended in an exciting draw, and putting the latter on the scoreboard for the first time. 15-year-old Fabiano Caruana is alone in second place.