by Aviv Friedman

Shirov - Kasparov:

Shirov - Kasparov:   The fact that there was once again no handshake between the two bitter rivals, is certainly not a surprise. Kasparov, using the Sicilian Sveshnikov for the first time in a serious rated game -- Yes, he played it before in simuls, in advanced chess, even in an Internet match, but as far as we could tell never in a 'real' tournament. The sacrifice on move 11 is probably older than Shirov himself. With time this became less and less popular with black finding all the defenses. Alexey tried to bring new life into it with his 15.f4, which looks new - but is it really an improvement? Here, Kasparov took one of his longest thinks of the tournament, and came up with 15…Kd8!? And now, it seems like white's initiative is simply not enough for the piece. Perhaps Alexey could have improved somewhere, like trying Ndc7 and taking the exchange, although by then he has a poor version of the old and known theory. It would be quite presumptuous of me to try and analyze all the nuances in the few minutes I have here, but I will point out black's killer shot of 21…Nxb4! That effectively removed any doubt about the final result of this game. There might have been other ways to victory, say 24…Rxa4 or 25…Qd5(!) but why criticize what worked anyway. Black was just playing with an extra piece, and at some moment Shirov simply wrote 0-1 on his score sheet, signed and stopped the clock. The players exchanged score sheets for the obligatory signing and left without saying a word. The winner beat the cellar dweller and black had earned his first win of the tournament.

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