Ivanchuk also takes World Blitz Ch

Vassily Ivanchuk’s last big goal in an already amazing year is of course winning the World Cup in Khanty-Mansyisk (first round next Saturday) but a nice foretaste is his title of world blitz champion, which he gained today in Moscow by winning an amazingly strong 20-player double round-robin tournament with 25.5 points out of 38 games. Second was Vishy Anand (24.5), who had an off-day yesterday but played like a world champ today, and third was last year’s winner Alexander Grischuk (23.5).

The event had started with 64 players in the preliminaries on Tuesday and Wednesday, who fought for 6 places in the World Blitz Championship, which run yesterday and today. Kasimdzhanov, Bacrot, Adams, Savchenko, Ponomariov, Dreev and Rublevsky had qualified and together with Anand, Karpov, Morozevich, Grischuk, Svidler and all Tal Memorial participants they would play the final group. Surprisingly two of the younger players, Jakovenko and Alekseev, chose for some rest because of the World Cup, and at the very last moment Svidler got ill and was replaced by Korotylev.

After the first day Ivanchuk was leading the field with 13.5 out of 19, followed by Grischuk (13), Kamsky (12,5) and Leko (12). Today it was really nerve-racking, because after 37 rounds Ivanchuk and Anand (who made a fantastic come-back) were both on 24.5 points. The tournament was decided by a huge blunder by Vishy, who had apparently used all his energy to get this far on the second day. He allowed a knight fork and it was immediately over. Here the decisive game, in the game viewer and on a video by Europe-Echecs:

Many more videos can be found at Europe-Echecs. All games can be downloaded here in PGN.

Final standings:

World Blitz Moscow 21-22 November 2007

Place	SNo.	Name	Fed.	FIDE	Total	S.B.	Wins
1	16	Ivanchuk, Vassily	UKR	2787	25.5	480	19
2	4	Anand, Viswanathan	IND	2801	24.5	437	18
3	3	Grischuk, Alexander	RUS	2715	23.5	430.5	14
4	7	Kamsky, Gata	USA	2714	23.5	429	16
5	8	Kramnik, Vladimir	RUS	2785	21.5	393.75	13
6	1	Leko, Peter	HUN	2755	21.5	392.5	13
7	9	Rublevsky, Sergei	RUS	2676	21.5	385.75	16
8	18	Morozevich, Alexander	RUS	2755	21	378.5	16
9	17	Carlsen, Magnus	NOR	2714	20.5	352	15
10	13	Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	AZE	2752	18.5	344.75	13
11	20	Adams, Michael	ENG	2729	18.5	337.25	13
12	11	Ponomariov, Ruslan	UKR	2705	18	339.5	15
13	5	Kasimdzhanov, Rustam	UZB	2690	17.5	319.75	11
14	2	Dreev, Alexey	RUS	2607	17	313.5	12
15	14	Gelfand, Boris	ISR	2736	17	310.75	10
16	6	Savchenko, Boris	RUS	2583	17	291.5	13
17	19	Shirov, Alexei	ESP	2739	16	298.75	11
18	12	Karpov, Anatoly	RUS	2670	14	252	8
19	10	Bacrot, Etienne	FRA	2695	12	235	9
20	15	Korotylev, Alexey	RUS	2600	11.5	205.25	7

And here some photos (by Anna Burtasovoy):

Vassily Ivanchuk (against Boris Gelfand)

Boris Gelfand with Vishy & Aruna Anand

Alexander Grischuk

Vladimir Kramnik - Peter Leko

Magnus Carlsen

Michael Adams

Alexander Morozevich - Vishy Anand

Alexei Shirov being interviewed