A deeply disappointed Vassily Ivanchuk walked into the press room this evening after drawing with Sergei Tiviakov. Ukraine's number one was sure he was winning today. Anish Giri drew also his fifth game, against Judit Polgar. In the open group Haslinger won against Nijboer and now only needs a draw tomorrow to win outright.

The 17th Univé Chess Tournament, formerly known as Essent Tournament but sponsored by insurance company Univé this year, takes place October 16-24 in Hoogeveen, The Netherlands. As always the Crown Group is a 4-player, double round-robin with this year Vassily Ivanchuk (2756), Judit Polgar (2687), Sergei Tiviakov (2670) and Anish Giri (2552) playing for a € 10,000 prize fund. The time control is 40 moves in 1.5 hours + 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from the start.

Round 5

Sergei Tiviakov has excellent chances to win this year's Crown Group in Hoogeveen, after he escaped with a draw today against Vassily Ivanchuk. "Yes, my position was very bad," the Dutch grandmaster admitted, "but after I gave the exchange I didn't see a clear win for White." Indeed it wasn't so easy, but the very difficult computer line given below in the viewer seems convincing enough for objectively assessing the position as winning for White.

Anish Giri is still holding his own; today he added another draw to his collection and again it was quite an interesting game. After the opening the position seemed difficult for White, but eventually Polgar couldn't find a way to reach an advantage. The two analysed the game for about two hours in the press room, but things remained unclear even there.

After his post-mortem Giri told me that he was very impressed about Polgar's play. "The way she calculates variations is very good," he said. During the many blitz sessions in the press room (at the moment of writing he's 4-0 up against one of our editors), Giri is showing that tactical vision is currently the area in chess where he excels, and so it is understandable that he's impressed when someone still beats him there!

In the open group Haslinger and Nijboer were both on 6/7, a full point ahead of the rest of the field. Naturally they were paired against each other and this game was decided by, well, perhaps already dubious opening preparation by Nijboer. "I don't like 6...d6, I really think Black should go for the 6...Qb6 line there," Haslinger said afterwards. "It's important for White to put the queen on e2, because then later on pawn a6 will be hanging. That way Black has to play a6-a5." It was a model game for White against the Kan.

Haslinger needs a draw with Black against Genov tomorrow to secure clear first. If he loses, Nijboer can still finish shared first, but for that he needs to beat Friedel with White.

Game viewer

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links

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