Caruana wins in Biel after play-off
29 July 2010, 16.30 CET | By Peter Doggers | Filed under: Reports | Tags:
Fabiano Caruana won the Young Grandmaster Tournament in Biel today. The Italian was the strongest in a necessary play-off with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, whom he beat in the final.
The play-off final between Fabiano Caruana and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son
The Young Grandmaster Tournament was part of the Biel Chess Festival in Switzerland, which takes place July 17-30. Anish Giri, David Howell, Fabiano Caruana, Maxim Rodshtein, Parimarjan Negi, Dmitry Andreikin, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Wesley So and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son played.
Young Grandmasters (Biel) | Round 9 (final) standings
Young Grandmasters (Biel) | Play-off Semi-final
Young Grandmasters (Biel) | Play-off Final
Round 9 & play-off
As leaders Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave drew in the last round, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son was able to catch the two in the standings by beating Giri. In fact the Vietnamese finished first on tiebreak. As regulations dictated, on Thursday morning a rapid play-off was played between the players who finished on shared 1st place. It was decided that the numbers 2 and 3 played each other and the winner would play Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son.
But first things first: the final round on Wednesday. From a quiet King’s Indian Attack, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son slowly outplayed Anish Giri, who might regret his 17th move (e.g. 17…Rfe8 looks close to equal). After a forced sequence of moves an ending was reached where White had more than enough compensation for the pawn.
Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son-Anish Giri
Biel 2010
Position after 28.Rxb7.
The Vietnamese continued to play strongly and although Black might have been able to hold the draw, the win seemed fully deserved.
Rodshtein must have missed a win somehere against Tomashevsky. Both 37.Qd4! and 40.Ne4! seem to lead to a decisive advantage. Andreikin reached equality remarkably easily against So, using the Old Indian. The ending was soon better for Black thanks to his superior knight, but it was never winning. Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave drew relatively quickly to secure the rapid play-off.
Play-off
And so we come to this morning’s action. Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave first both won one rapid game (10 minutes & 10 seconds increment) with the white pieces. What exactly happened in the first game is not yet clear to us – was one more move played (Bxg3) and did the Frenchman touch his queen? It’s more likely that the game was saved incompletely. In any case, he recovered well and won a nice, tactical ending to level the score.
Vachier-Lagrave continued strongly, and reached a promising position again with the white pieces in the Armageddon blitz game.
Vachier-Lagrave-Caruana
Biel 2010
Here 38.Rb2?! allowed 38…Qa4! and the tables turned, as …Qd1 and Ra1 cannot be prevented. White should still be able to hold it, but the defence proved too difficult.
Caruana had an even narrower escape in the first game of the final against Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, as he defended an ending two pawns down to a draw. In the second game he struck decisively.
Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son-Caruana
Biel 2010
Here 30.Rc2 should draw. 30.b3?! was answered by the strong 30…a3! and after 31.Ra8 Ra5 32.Rxa5 bxa5 33.Nd4 Nb4 34.Nb5 Nxa2 35.Nxa3 Nc1 Black won a pawn, which was, like in almost any knight ending, decisive.
Games rounds 9 & tiebreak
Game viewer by ChessTempo
Fabiano Caruana with the winner's medal in Biel
Links
- Official website
- Games in PGN: Young GMs, Tiebreak via TWIC
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Giri on -1. And not playing convincing as well. Some time ago we already saw him as the only guy that might be strong enough to beat Carlsen in the future.. What happened?
31 draws in 45 games, many of them utterly dull. These are some of the most promising players who will dominate chess life in the coming decade. They should be ashamed.
Giri needs to play more 1.e4 he is way too young for 1.d4, plenty of time for that in the future.
1) many draws!
2) bad performance from giri!
3) caruana keeps on his slow but promising progress!
4) not very bright for the future of chess: think about fischer, kasparov, carlsen, kramnik etc. at their teenage terms!
The tournament just showed that many (most?) promising players are never going to make it to the top.
On the Caruana – Vachier-Lagrave playoff:
Game 1: For a while, the live transmission showed a position with queen and passed pawn on the seventh rank for white vs. rook and bishop for black. So apparently the game continued for a few (dozen?) moves, but it’s impossible to reconstruct what exactly happened in the meantime.
Armaggedon game 3: Not sure if the defense really proved too difficult, or if white just wanted to avoid a draw (e.g. 44.Qg2) at any cost – of course just an academic question, he had “nothing to lose by losing” (not even rating points).
Altogether, the Frenchman was eliminated despite being better (at some stage) in all three games, that’s blitz … .
I agree with wortwart. The lack of fighting spirit by some of the players is shocking! Here they are invited to a closed round-robin tournament and instead of trying to show what they can, they simply agree to draws as soon as they are out of book. Looks like none of them will ever become world champion!
Congrats to Caruana! As for Giri, what happened was probably what happened to Kramnik in Dortmund: one annoying period of lousy form. Cannot win all the tournaments.
Interesting tie-break games
Caruana had two lost position with White, and interesting to tell that he won with Black two decisive games.
Congrats Caruana, future it’s in good hands.
Very bad tournament example. So many playable games ended in Quick Draws. Quick Draws promotes Fixed Draws and should be banned in chess. Very unfortunate because the solution to this issue is very easy:
Just let them play another game with time control based on the remaining time when draw was agreed. If the additional game still ends in quick draw, they will play again if necessary (as punishment) until they reach Sudden death. The official game will be the last game played because the previous ones are not worth reviewing.
Note: It should only apply to quick draws and not ordinary draws.
Better yet, let the audience decide who wins and banish the loser from the country. Can’t trust a chessplayer when the question is the result of his game.
The most promising players are in India and – maybe- China. Put Giri to play the indian u-20 and he would not finish among the top 5. It depends a lot on oportunities: many western young players are clearly overrated in comparison to asian players. Just see the world juniors and youth championship: almost all the medals winners are from asia, specially India and China. Look at this Vietnam player Liem … he would be easily 2700 if he was european or american. The asian players are the real force in young chess, not many of this GMs in Biel.
@machadov,
Three were in Biel, and they finished at places 1-3, 5-7, and 10. Not bad, but not exactly a real force in young chess, either. Quite average. The promising players from China have been circulating in top events for many years already – again, they are good but nothing special. Nothing has ever prevented Indian players from reaching the top; Anand has made it, and they have a cloud of well-known decent grandmasters, as one would expect. To summarise, there is no indication whatsoever that the players from South-East Asia are anyhow different (be it stronger or weaker) from those from Europe or Americas.