GM Joel wraps up the Aeroflot and recaps Tal Memorial

This week I’ll have a report on the Tal Memorial Rapid and Blitz tournament, but first let me wrap the Aeroflot Open.

Vladislav Kovalev - Photo by Niklesh Jain

24-year-old Belarussian GM Vladislav Kovalev emerged as the clear winner with 7/9, followed by the Indian Sethuraman and the young Russian Gordievsky at 6.5.  It was a tournament where a lot of the top seeds took it on the chin, as you might expect in Russia.  The win that catapulted Kovalev to first place came in the penultimate round against a player we profiled for knocking off Fedoseev earlier in the tournament.  Here the young Iranian Tabatabaei seemed outsmarted in the opening and had to play catch up:

IM Amin Tabatabei (Iran)

The Tal Memorial brought together many of the world’s elite players, with a little more emphasis on Russian players than most top level events.  Vishy Anand continues to defy the aging process, taking first place in the rapid portion with 6/9. 

Anand, victorious at the Tal Memorial Rapid

His signature win featured a stunning combination against Alexander Grischuk, not very complicated but quite beautiful:

GM Karjakin won the Blitz leg of the Tal Memorial

Sergey Karjakin won the blitz portion handily with a score of 10/13, a point and a half clear of Hikaru Nakamura.  Blitz games are going to have their share of errors, even at the elite level, but I would like to show a couple of games that got my attention.  First a sharp battle between Grischuk and Kramnik that shows the seesaw nature of many of these games.

Finally, I want to delve into something up my alley, a liquidation into an unusual pawn ending:

Several of the Tal participants have moved on to the Candidates tournament.  Round three is going on as we record this; Mamedyarov, Kramnik, and Caruana have each gotten off to a 1.5/2 start.  ICC will have video recaps of the action from Berlin.  I’ll be doing the show on Sunday, March 25^th.