Corus 2003 at Wijk aan Zee, Round 11

by Aviv Friedman

Corus chess tournament round 11:

Now that the tournament is going into its last leg, I wanted to give my personal (and biased) impressions of one of the players from the viewpoint of a chess fan/journalist. Vishy Anand is

GM Anand

without a doubt the consummate professional and sportsman. At his level and with his status he could have easily been remote and snobbish but he is exactly the opposite! A frequent visitor to the pressroom, he already demonstrated 2 of his games to the crowd at great length and with typical eloquence. He is always available for questions about his game and often times he can be heard repeating that more than once, sometimes in different languages to different reporters. He combines the manners and mannerisms of a gentleman and proves time and again that he possesses a witty sense of humor and a positive, optimistic attitude to boot. It is great privilege to speak to him about his games. I can say I have spoken to and analyzed with many strong GM's and players but this is another sphere altogether. He encompasses vast knowledge with so much understanding and experience that make it easy to understand why he is at the very top. Sometimes he leaves the impression that he just doesn't forget information that he absorbs. This year he teased me jokingly about something regarding my travel to Linares from last year. Add to all this his super friendly wife Aruna who is always willing to help and contribute info if she has it and you have an exemplary couple in the not-always-just-friendly chess world. For years we have all read compliments about the Indian GM, but it took meeting him and his wife to see it is all true.

Perhaps I could send some titled players for some chess and behavior lessons with Vishy?

Today's battles:

Topalov - Krasnekov: Another visit to the Berlin Ruy Lopez by Michal. After his comfortable draw with Vishy that is no surprise of course. White keeps trying to find ways to gain more against the slightly worse, but resilient black position. Today we saw the rarely used 13.Nf3 (usually Nge4 is played) and that was answered quickly by a new move 13…Be6. White certainly came out from the opening with some advantage, but it is always hard to tell if it can become anything tangible. Things started heading south for the Polish GM around move 25…Bf5?! More urgent seemed 25…g4 trying to liquidate the kingside. This omission became apparent after 30.h4 and 31.h5 where the outside passer was a serious, soon to be fatal problem. 34.g5 was sealing the poor faith of black despite the momentary inconvenience of the white R on a5. Finally white simple traded his kingside pawns for all the black pawns on the other side, leaving him up 2 full pawns with a distant black K. Michal could have resigned, but perhaps miffed by his play he played on for about 15 more moves before recognizing his faith. Nice game by Topalov!

GM Radjabov

Radjabov - Shirov: Quickly we witnessed a psychedelic line in the Meran, Semi Slav that has happened before in the game Piket - Shirov from the Melody Amber rapid earlier this year. Since that game ended in a draw the big question is what does Radja have in mind? Is he after a quick draw or did he prepare something new. On move 17 Alexey was going into the think tank for 30 minutes but also played 17…Rxd8. Teimour was moving fast and quickly revealed his novelty. 21.Rad1 instead of rushing to take the Nf6 as in the abovementioned game. When the clouds cleared and white regained his material deficit, it once again looked like black emerged unscathed from this variation. The players shuffled around till 47…h5+?! Changed the character of the game by adding a pawn to the light squares range of the white B. It seems to me black should have omitted this nervous move and waited to see if white can make further progress. Inexplicably to me, just when it seems like white might win the h5 pawn and try to push his kingside pawns the opponents called it a day when black managed to attack the h2 pawn and defend h5.

Van Wely - Kramnik:

GM Loek van Wely showing his game against GM Kramnik

Both players have had this classical Nimzo Indian before, so both must have expected the opening. This has all been played a lot during the early 90's, I remembered a nice win by H. Olafsson he analyzed in New In Chess. Strangely, Loek seemed to have embarked on a faulty plan starting with 16.h4 (if to quote some very high rated GM's on ICC: " What is Loeky doing?!") This led to some giggles in the pressroom since Vishy opined black was better around move 19-20 while Bykhovsky, Grischuk's trainer and Chuchelov, Loek's second thought white was better! Boy that makes me feel good about my own chess! J The point of argument was if the white K was uncomfy or not. Loek suggested he might have done better with 18.Kb1 instead of 18.Rd2 but still liked his position. He disagreed with the claims that he was ever worse and said black's 'just looks better, but I got the plan of advancing my g pawn'. That indeed happen and slowly white advanced and pushed the black pieces back (30.Ka2 kicking the R back and freeing his Rd2 for action) After 35.f4! Loek said he felt he would win the game as white's initiative was growing strongly. 38…Qxf6? Was the decisive mistake. For better or worse, 38…Qe6 was forced and the struggle continues. 40…h6 was forced or else white would have played h6 himself, and with 41.b4 he had nothing better than to try for the B endgame with 41…Rg8 but it was a lost one. The queenside pawn majority was simply too much for Vlady to stop.

GM Karpov vs GM Ivanchuk

Karpov - Ivanchuk: A garden variety Neo-Gruenfeld where black lures white to go d4-d5 so that he could hit the center with a …c6 followed the beaten path for a while until Ivanchuk started a tactical melee with an interesting novelty 16…Bg4!?. Fritz seems to like 18…e5 better than 18…Bf6 in the game. 20.d6! was a nice resource, the point of which was 20…exd6? 21.Rxe8+ Qxe8 22.Re1! and if Qd8 23.Nd5 wins. So black went for the forced line as in the game that left him down an exchange for two pawns, with one of them falling immediately. Alas, a B and a P for a R with all the pawns on the same side with safe K like in the game, is not enough to win and so a draw was agreed upon on move 39, right before the end of the first time control.

Anand - Grischuk:

GM Anand vs GM Grischuk

No 3.d4 in the open Sicilian for Vishy today. He opted for a purely positional Rossolimo; Not a bad choice against his aggressive opponent, also as we found out quickly, Anand decided in favor of a quick draw to maintain his lead. He admitted he got nothing out of the opening and why risk anything?

GM Polgar vs GM Bareev

Polgar - Bareev: Last year the Burn variation of the French defense literally got burned. It produced 2 embarrassing miniatures for Bareev and van Wely, but this year Bareev looked to have almost equalized in it. Normally, after a move such as 10…c5 the worst is clearly over. If you blink then you missed the mass piece trades and the R ending with black having one single weakness is typically drawish. On move 29 the players agreed with that and shared the point.

Timman - Ponomariov: A shell shocked Timman played what transposed into a boring exchange Slav. When the position resembled the one players who need a draw get to, with little life, Jan managed to make another amazing blunder in 21.a3?? hanging an exchange like a total beginner L for another sad sad loss.

GM Zhang vs WGM Cmilyte

Photos by Jan van de Mortel, courtesy Corus Tournament Organization.

ICC Coverage of Corus 2003 Copyright © Internet Chess Club 2003