‘The Kid’ strikes with the KID

Perhaps it was the combination of the storm that was hitting the Dutch coast with 10 bft and the fact that there were no amateur games, that made it awfully quiet yesterday at the Corus Chess Tournament. The visitors who made the trip to Wijk aan Zee were paid for their efforts as there were some interesting games again. Of course there was the first victory of Loek van Wely and the third win with Black for ‘The Kid’ Teimour Radjabov. As I think this is quite unique I would like to pay some attention to this game.

All the games with Black of Radjabov so far were King’s Indians and he won them all. This famous opening came a bit under a cloud after Kasparov quit playing it. Especially the (now perhaps not so) fearsome Bayonet Attack made the Black case hard to defend. The funny thing is that I know three repertoire books for White (Starting Out 1.d4! by John Cox, Play 1.d4! by Richard Pallister and Beating the Indian Defences by Graham Burgess & Steffen Pedersen) which all recommend the Bayonet (9.b4).

In game 1 and 3 Radjabov defeated respectively Loek van Wely and Alexei Shirov in this very variation. The former must have tasted especially sweet as last year Van Wely beat him convincingly in Khanty Mansiysk. But it seems that Radjabov has unconditional faith in the variation and perhaps there are more super-GMs to follow. Who would disagree with the tournament leader (4,5 out of 5)?

Back to today’s game. Radjabov played David Navara who did not go for the Bayonet but the more quiet variation with 5.Bg5. After a bold pawn sac by Black, White got the better position and it seemed that Radjabov was in danger. Navara - who made quite an impression to me with his draw against Kramnik - failed to exploit his advantage and after several major inaccuracies he allowed Radjabov to perform a pretty finish.

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