Can Navara hold on?
19-year-old
GM David Navara of the Czech Republic is having the tournament of his
life. With three rounds to play his only problem is that there are still three
rounds to play! That's plenty of time for the large pack of more experienced
players to catch up to the youngster if he falters. So far he's been very impressive,
winning six games against a loss and three draws. Can the Czech champion last
three more rounds? (Photos from the very entertaining official site.)
The long list of players in Antalya, Turkey hoping otherwise includes top seed
Vassily Ivanchuk. The supertournament veteran started the event with a loss
but has steadily risen since. In the last two rounds he rested with two short
draws and so should have energy for the home stretch. Meanwhile Miroshnichenko
has played only two draws during the entire event so far.
When
you look at the leaderboard on the right you might wonder what has happened
to two of the top seeds, Vadim Milov and Teimour Radjabov (photo below).
The Swiss Milov was hit for a pair of losses and is out of the running.
Wunderkind Radjabov's story is simply too many draws. He started with two wins
and since then has drawn eight games in a row! The last one was an 11-mover
against his Azerbaijani teammate Gashimov, but overall Radjabov has simply been
unable to score points against his lower-rated opposition.
According to Garry Kasparov this has much to do with how Radjabov was dropped
into so many top-level events at such a young age. "He hasn't really learned
how to win," was how the world #1 put it. Radjabov is used to trying to
survive in Linares, where draws against the likes of the top-ten are more than
reasonable.
When playing against lower-rated guys he should beat he doesn't seem able
to shift gears. While Radjabov has an incredible amount of top-level experience
he has never won a GM tournament because he plays in such strong events.
Kasparov
was also disdainful of many of the games played in this year's event. Not because
of the players, but because of the FIDE time control in use that makes consistent
play all but impossible. We watched over his shoulder as he flicked through
some of the Euro Ch games in ChessBase.
More than a few times he would see an interesting result and then be surprised
when a very drawish position would arise in the game. "How could anybody
lose this position?" he would wonder, and then watch as blunder followed
blunder in the increment time control.
One of the ideas behind the increment is to avoid silly losses on time in even
positions, or to allow a clearly winning position to be converted. But when
you start with only 90 minutes and don't get any more time at move 40, the endgame
is often a total disaster. This makes the games a little painful to annotate,
we admit. We don't like to show strong Grandmaster playing blunders in relatively
simple positions.
Ivanchuk
– Radulski after 29.Bg3
This position is anything but simple, but it IS simply
terrible. White has no way to deal with the pressure on the h-file and
the top seed resigned after 29...Nxg4! 0-1
It's curtains after 30.fxg4 Rxg3+ 31.Kxg3 Qh3+ 32.Kf2
Bh4+ (the point) 33.Rg3 Bxg3+ 34.Kg1 Bxg4 and Black has a few extra pawns
and a continuing attack. |
Navara
– Anastasian after 37...Rc5?!
Here the tournament leader used a pretty trick to force
liquidation into a winning rook endgame.
38.Rb4! Rxc2+ (38...Rxb4?? 39.Re8# checkmate) 39.Rxc2
Rxb4 40.Rc8+ Kh7 41.Kb2 Ra4 42.Rc5 Ra2+ 43.Kxb3 Rxg2 44.a6 and White
won the race easily. |
Nyback
– Ivanchuk after 29.Bd2??
White was hoping to prevent ..c3 but he only made it more
powerful! Some interesting skewers make this tactic a little hard to see.
29...c3! 30.Bxc3 b4 pinning and winning the bishop
was the prosaic game continuation and White resigned a few moves later.
The c3 pawn was immune.
30.bxc3 Rxd2 wins a piece (also 30...Qd5+ 31.e4 Qxd2) |
Jobava
– Aronian after 14.Na3?
You can't blame this one on the time control. Black makes
a pawn disappear in thin air.
14...Bxh3! 15.c4!? Offering the a1 rook to get
at the black king and the h3 bishop at the same time. Fritz says Black
can take the rook, but it wouldn't be an easy defense for a human after
15...Qxa1 16.c5. However, 15...Ng4! hitting f2 was very strong. Black
retreated with 15...Bd7 and won on move 31.
White couldn't capture the h3 bishop because of mate in
five with 15.gxh3?? Qg3+ and ..Ng4 is coming.
|