Carlsen in sole lead as Kramnik loses to Anand
30 January 2010, 15.09 CET | Last modified: 4:46 | By Peter Doggers | Filed under: Reports | Tags:
A quick draw with Peter Leko was enough for Magnus Carlsen to grab sole lead in Wijk aan Zee today, as Vladimir Kramnik went down against Viswanathan Anand. “Here I’m basically spoiling other people’s tournaments,” the Indian said after the game in which he had managed to win against the Petroff Defence.
The Corus Chess Tournament takes place January 16-31 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Next to hundreds of amateurs, three Grandmaster Groups (A, B and C) with 14 players each play a closed round-robin. The rate of play is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, and 30 seconds increment starting from move 1.
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Games round 12
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Round 12
15:09 CET
We have a winner already! The leader of the C grop, Li Chao, offered a draw to Stefan Kuipers after 9 moves in a Petroff, and the young Dutchman, who already scored an IM norm yesterday, had no reason to decline. The Chinese grandmaster has thus qualified for the B group next year as he’s on 9 points out of 12 games, and Robson, Vocaturo and Van Kampen have 7 points while still playing.
Leko and Carlsen (whose sister Ingrid, by the way, is currently playing in the amateur tournament in Gibraltar) repeated their game of the 2009 Tal Memorial until 12.0-0-0; today the Norwegian castled first before playing …Nc6. After one and a half hours of play they’ve reached a rook ending that looks very drawish.
Yet again Van Wely, who remains faithful to his Najdorf, seems to have fallen into some nasty 6.Bg5 preparation, this time by compatriot Jan Smeets. Against Dominguez, Ivanchuk copied Kramnik’s set-up during the World Blitz in Moscow last year: the Scandinavian with …g6. Kramnik himself uses the Petroff against Anand; not much has happened there yet.
Shirov is in another theoretical Archangelsk Ruy Lopez against Karjakin; the two reached an ending in no time where White’s extra pawn doesn’t seem to be very relevant. Caruana-Nakamura is a Rauzer Sicilian that has some French tendencies while Short went for the rare 4…Nf6 Caro-Kann against Tiviakov.
16:17 CET
Two, not very surprsing draws: Leko-Carlsen – the rook ending was a draw indeed, and Karjakin-Shirov, which also remained equal. Also on the other boards it’s rather quiet so far, except for Smeets-Van Wely where White’s atack has already decided the game on move 23. “I like my Najdorf, but I don’t like my results. Apparently I mixed up something in the opening again,” Van Wely said after the game. We’ll have him and Jan in tonight’s Corus News video.
O, and strictly speaking we’ve been cheering too early for Li Chao, who can still be caught of course if he loses tomorrow. Sorry about that.
22:18 CET
Well, after all Li Chao did win the C group today as he’s going into the final round with a 1.5 point lead as his closest rivals didn’t manage to win today. Tailender Sjoerd Plukkel won his first game as Zhaoqin Peng avoided the draw for too long.
In B, Giri maintained his one-point lead. The Dutch champion tried hard to beat Akobian in a rook ending, but the American defended well. Nyback beat Negi and Naiditsch defeated Muzychuk, but the other games ended in a draw as well.
But the game of the day was of course Anand versus Kramnik, in which the World Champion defeated his opponent of the last World Championship match one more time, but now in the Petroff, the opening that never came on the board in Bonn in 2008. Anand’s 17.Qc1 was new compared to yesterday’s Shirov-Kramnik game, and a few moves later he more or less proved that White can actually get something out of this opening as long as one manoeuvres strongly.
After a very nice combination that started on move 28, for the first time in his career Anand repeated moves to gain time on the clock. Both online commentator Ian Rogers and Vladimir Kramnik himself thought for a moment that it was a three-fold repetition and Kramnik even said “draw?” to Vishy, who pointed out that because White took a pawn on f7 at the start, there was in fact no position that appeared three times. (We have this moment on video in the Corus News!)
Carlsen now leads by half a point while Shirov and Kramnik are shared second. The Norwegian has White against Caruana tomorrow so the world’s number one seems pretty safe.
Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A
Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B
Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C
Corus 2010 | Round 12 Standings Grandmaster Group A
Corus 2010 | Round 12 Standings Grandmaster Group B
Corus 2010 | Round 12 Standings Grandmaster Group C
Links
- Official website
- Games in PGN via TWIC: Group A | Group B | Group C
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The win looked effortless for Anand. Unusual at this level…
Will Giri-Akobian be a draw?
When i checked Giri-Akobian 20 minutes ago, the last moves were 49…Rh8 50.Re4, but now they have been removed. Why is this?
Today, friends tried to help their friends, and one prevailed while another tried very hard yet not getting the desired result. I may be reading too much into it, but, today, Anand had nothing to spare from his preparation for the match against Topalov. Of course, anything is possible, (Carlesn won with French the other day!) but one can hardly imagine Topalov playing Petroff. Yet again, I was surprised when we he played Caro.
It’s been a great Corus 2010, at all levels. One more round to go!
I have a question: is it possible to find entire videos of the players analysing their games in the post mortem? For instance, I would LOVE to see the entire video with Shirov and kramnik!
@T. Goto: Whom do you mean with ‘a friend trying to help his friend … trying hard but not getting the desired result’? I thought about Leko helping Kramnik, but to me it seems he wasn’t really interested in more than a draw against Carlsen (understandable after losing his last two games against Magnus), and that’s what he got.
BTW, Li Chao has already won the C group (Peter was just a few hours early with his congrats) as his rivals all failed to win today – Vocatura and van Kampen even lost against nominally weaker opponents.
And Sjoerd Plukkel (discussed here before the tournament) won his first game, now he may not even lose many ELO points from his Corus C adventure.
I wish Kramnik wins this event.
Honestly, I doubt Kramnik will win now. Carlsen is playing white against Caruana. Magnus should take the full point. Kramnik plays against Karjakin, Kramnik may win but might not be enough if Magnus wins his game.
Anyway, I personally love seeing “veteran” players like Kramnik, Anand, Shirov and Ivanchuk having sucess in strong events like this.
Kramnik was too lucky in this tournament and he didn’t lose the games he should have lost. One or two losses in this tournament is fair result.
Referring to his win, first against Shirov and now against Kramnik, Anand reportedly said, “I’m basically spoiling other people’s tournaments.” Of course, it is perfectly fine to do this. In a way, I am happy that he has punished Kramnik for relying too much on Petroff.
However, I hope Anand doesn’t do one thing. Topalov was unable to beat Kramnik for the undisputed World title in Elista 2006 despite the big drama from the Topalov camp. Eventually, Anand took the title from Kramnik. Now it will be an irony if Anand were to hand in the title on a platter to Topalov in Bulgaria later this year.
@Thomas,
Well, I thought Leko at least went for something sharper than usual in the opening, but it’s just my impression. Nothing more than that, really.
His best games always look like that.
t am not worrying about Anand anymore with his upcoming match against Topalov.today he was outstanding and he brought standard back in the game.it was POWER PLAY.
Not sure why chess sites kept saying that Li clinched the “C” group with the short draw. He DID clinch a TIE for 1st. All the 7-pointers were still playing and if they had won, it was still possible to catch Li. Of course, they would have to win and Li would have to lose to all end on 9-4. Of course all this is now moot with Li’s competition not getting wins.
“If Kramnik loses to Anand, the tournament finish could be really exciting.” I commented after round 10.
He did & it is.
V. Kramnik was and is still my fav. Integer, smart, ful of humor! And I think he is also a good listener.
@Daaim: while it’s indeed mood by now …. maybe at least Li Chao himself thought that, in any case, he would have a superior tiebreak – I didn’t do the calculations, but he seems well ahead of Robson and Vocaturo (things aren’t as clear with respect to Van Kampen).
More likely, he didn’t consider the possibility of losing with white against Peng today!? At least now we are spared potential discussions about a “Chinese deal” (there are precedents …). Imagine the following, now hypothetical situation:
- one or all of Li chao’s competitors had won yesterday, and
- today Peng gets a strong attack and then goes for a perpetual check.
I know that Peng represents the Netherlands for many years, but some people could still “smell a rat”!?
Some people could even write about a rat some other people could smell if something would happen that now -what a relief!- could not happen any longer.