Rising Stars beat Experience 33½-16½

In the last round of the NH Chess Tournament, the Rising Stars beat Experience 3½-1½ thanks to victories of L’Ami (against Korchoi) and Caruana (against Agdestein), making the final score 33½-16½.

We already mentioned Wang Yue’s quick draw against Bareev, which means the Chinese grandmaster will be testing his rapid and blindfold skills in March next year.

Erwin L’Ami played what was probably his best game of the tournament; he outplayed Korchnoi in the opening and with the “move of the day”, 25.d4!!, the Dutchman already decided matters. This time Korchnoi reacted as a true sportsman to his defeat, and he praised his young opponent during the rest of the day. Which included a show by the two players in the commentary room, explaining their game to the Dutch chess fans. Excerpts are included in my last video (below); the full show might be published at a later stage here at ChessVibes.

In the final standings you will see that the player in the Rising Stars team with the lowest score (Daniel Stellwagen) scored more points that the best in the Experience team, Simen Agdestein. The Norwegian finished above Bareev on SB points, despite his last-round loss against Caruana. In timetrouble, only his 33…Rxc4? was a mistake, where 33…Rd4! 34.Rxd4 cxd4 35.Nb5 d3! 36.Kf1 Bxc4 37.Ke1 bxb5 38.axb5 is a drawn rook ending.

In the very last game of the tournament to finish, Cheparinov-Ljubojevic, nothing was wrong with the live broadcast and the resulting PGN file, as you might have thought. No, in reality the players did actually repeat the position from moves 68 to 84! Ljubojevic refused to offer a draw because earlier in the game “Cheparinov had offered me a draw in a clearly worse position” “I offered him a draw in a slightly better position but he refused” (Ljubojevic), whilst Cheparinov stated afterwards that he did offer a draw at some point, which was apparently rejected by Ljubojevic. Not a very mature way to finish such a tournament by the two players, but OK. Most of these remarkable moments is captured in the last two videos.

And so the third NH Chess Tournament has come to an end. Wang Yue’s 8.5 / 10 was easily the highest individual score in the three editions so far. Ivan Cheparinov and a companion of his choice will be invited to Nice to attend the Amber tournament as spectators. Fabiano Caruana won the third extra prize, a Sony VAIO laptop computer.

The Van Oosterom family have announced that they will sponsor the NH Chess Tournament for at least two more years. After this year’s edition it has become clear that the organizers need to rejuvenate the Experience team considerably to make it a clash between generations which won’t be decided after a few rounds already. But despite the fact that we had this scenario, it was quite an interesting tournament with lots of good fights, I think!

Here are the games of the tenth and last round:

Links:

• Official website
• Games in PGN