Chess for Wednesday 10th January 2007

The first two rounds of the ACP Rapid World Cup have been completed at Odessa. The Ukrainian Bank Pivdenny has put up $136,000 in prize money. The players have 20 minutes plus 5 seconds per move for each game. Two of the first round matches finished 1-1 and went to Blitz with three minutes plus two seconds per move and in both cases an ‘Armageddon game’ was required with five minutes for White and four to Black plus draw odds.

Round 1

Sokolov 0.5-1.5 Leko
Rublevsky 1.5-1.5 Naiditsch
Smirin 0.5-1.5 Shirov
Gelfand 2-0 Nakamura
Harikrishna 2-3 Morozevich
Radjabov 1.5-0.5 Bareev
Bologan 2-3 Bacrot
Ivanchuk 2-0 Amonatov

Round two

Ivanchuk 1.5-0.5 Bacrot
Radjabov 1.5-0.5 Morozevich (Morozevich hung a rook in a completely winning position in game one with white)
Shirov 0.5-1.5 Gelfand
Leko 2-0 Rublevsky

Annotated Game in PGN

Bacrot,E (2705) - Bologan,V (2658) [B07]
1st ACP World Rapid Cup Odessa UKR (1.2), 06.01.2007
[IM Malcolm Pein]

1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 g6 3.c4 Bg7 4.Nc3 Nd7 The Modern Defence but it often leads back to the King's Indian. 5.e4 e5 6.Be2 Ngf6 7.0-0 0-0 8.Be3 Re8 9.d5 Nh5 10.g3 Bf8 A Moldovan speciality. Black prepares Ng7 and f7-f5 and does not worry about his rook looking slightly silly on e8. 11.Ng5 Going for outright refutation the standard plan is [11.Ne1 Ng7 12.Nd3 f5 13.f3 Be7 14.Qd2 Rf8 15.b4 attacking the queenside with c4-c5.] 11...Ng7 12.f4 exf4 [12...h6 13.Nxf7 Kxf7 14.fxe5+ Kg8 15.e6 Ne5 16.Qd2 and Black will have to sacrifice back on e6.] 13.gxf4 f6 14.Ne6 Nxe6 15.dxe6 Rxe6 16.Qd5 Nb6 17.Bxb6 axb6 18.Bg4 f5! 19.Bxf5 gxf5 20.exf5

White wins rook for bishop but his king is rather weak and Black's pieces become active. 20...c6 21.Qg2+ Kh8 22.fxe6 Bxe6 Black has a fine bishop pair, an open file and potentially White squared dominance. In practice this is hard to counter at a fast time limit. 23.Qe4 Qf6 24.Rae1 Bf5 25.Qe3 Bg7 26.Kh1 Qf7 27.b3 b5!? 28.cxb5 d5! 29.bxc6 bxc6 Threatening d5-d4 now Qd2 was possible but Black has good compensation. Instead Bacrot miscalculates a long tactical sequence. 30.Rg1 d4 31.Rxg7 Qxg7 32.Qe5 [32.Qe8+ loses after 32...Rxe8 33.Rxe8+ Qg8 34.Rxg8+ Kxg8 35.Nd1 d3 36.a4 d2 37.a5 Bc2 38.Nc3 Bxb3 39.a6 d1Q+ 40.Nxd1 Bxd1 41.a7 Bf3+ 42.Kg1 c5] 0-1