Morozevich wakes up in time, beats Khalifman

58th Russian Championship Superfinal

The final stage of the Russian Championship is taking place from December 19-30, 2005, in Moscow, with rounds starting each day at 15:00h local time. It is a 12 player round robin, with time controls of 100/40, then 50/20, 10/rest, with a 30 seconds increment from move one. The total prize fund is US $130,000, with $40,000 going to the winner

Round four report

Morozevich-Khalifman: This was the most exciting game of the day. Morozevich, clearly well rested (that is our last jab at yesterday's incident), did aggressive battle with former FIDE world champion Alexander Khalifman.

Morozevich,A (2707) - Khalifman,A (2653) [C77]
ch-RUS Superfinal Moscow RUS (4), 22.12.2005
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.d3 d6 6.c3 g6 7.Bg5 Bg7 8.Nbd2 0-0 9.Nf1 h6 10.Bh4 Ne7 11.Bb3 c6 12.Ne3 Qc7 13.h3N b5 14.g4 Bb7 15.Bxf6 Bxf6

After his novelty on move 13 Morozevich launces his first attacking thrust: 16.g5 hxg5 17.Ng4 Kg7 18.Qd2 Ng8 19.h4 Qd7 20.Rg1 gxh4 21.Nxf6 Nxf6 22.Nxh4 Rh8 23.Qg5.

Black is a pawn up, but the pressure remains unbearable. 23...Rxh4. Khalifman decides to give an exchange, which would also be lost after 23...Rh5 24.Nf5+ Qxf5 25.Qxf5 Rxf5 26.exf5. 24.Qxh4 Rh8 25.Qg5 Rh5 26.Qd2 c5 27.0-0-0. With a rook for a knight and pawn White can settle down for slow, methodical win. But Black does not want to wait for that to happen and seeks counterplay. Some nice tactical lines follow: 27...c4 28.dxc4 Nxe4 29.Qe3 Rh3 30.f3 Nf6 31.c5 Rxf3 32.Qe1 a5 33.cxd6 a4 34.Bc2 Qe6 35.a3 Bd5 36.Qe2 e4 37.Qxb5 Qxd6 38.Qxa4 Qf4+ 39.Kb1 g5 40.Rxd5 Nxd5 41.Qxe4 Rf1+ 42.Rxf1 Qxf1+ 43.Ka2.

The dust has settled, White is a pawn up but with queens on the board. Morozevich shows us how a top GM handles this endgame. 43...Nf6 44.Qe5 g4 45.a4 Qf2 46.Qf5 Qe3 47.Bd1 g3 48.Bf3 Nd7 49.a5 Ne5 50.Bd5 f6 51.Qc8 Qf4 52.Qb7+ Kh6 53.Qb4 Qf2 54.Qd4 1-0.

Bareev-Volkov: Evgeny Bareev, world class GM and sometime second to Vladimir Kramnik, scored his first victory in this tournament to rise to 50%. The victim was the out-of-form Sergey Volkov, who has made just one draw so far in this tournament.

Bareev,E (2675) - Volkov,S (2614) [A29]
ch-RUS Superfinal Moscow RUS (4), 22.12.2005
1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.g3 Nd4 5.Bg2 Nxf3+ 6.Bxf3 Bc5 7.0-0 0-0 8.e3 d6 9.d4 Bb4 10.Nd5 Nxd5 11.cxd5 Bh3 12.Qa4 Bxf1 13.Kxf1 a5 14.a3 Re8 15.Qd1 e4 16.Be2 c6 17.axb4 axb4 18.Bd2 Qb6 19.Rc1 c5 20.Qb3 Ra5 21.Kg2 g6 22.h4 h5 23.Rd1 Rd8 24.Qc2 f5 25.dxc5 dxc5 26.f3 exf3+ 27.Bxf3 Qf6 28.e4 fxe4 29.Bxe4 Ra2 30.Bc1 Rf8 31.d6 Kh7 32.Qxc5

The game has been a rout, with the experienced Bareev completely outplaying his opponent. Volkov, clutching for straws, tries desperately for a perpetual: 32...Ra5 33.Qxa5 Qf2+ 34.Kh3 Qe2. There is no perpetual, and Morozevich finishes it with a flourish: 35.Bxg6+ 1-0.

Svidler-Rublevsky: this game between the leading GMs looked quite promising, but it turns out that Rublevsky had had the position at move 17 two and a half years earlier, against fellow-contestant Jakovenko at the Moscow Aeroflot Open 2003. Against Svidler he played a new move, and three moves later the game was drawn.

Kramnik-Zvjaginsev: cheeky, cheeky, the reserver player. After playing the now-famous 2.Na3 successfully against Khalifman in round two, 30-year-old Vadim Zvjaginsev had the nerve to play the King's Indian against The Great KID Killer himself, Vladimir Kramnik. There are very few GMs in the world who would dare to do this, but Zvjaginsev had some interesting new ideas and Kramnik found no way to do his usual 1-0 thing in this opening.

Tournament Statistics: The average rating in this event is 2664, which makes it a Category 17 tournament. If all the players were not grandmasters many times over they could aim for a GM norm by scoring five points. Rublevsky has the highest rating performance so far, with 2894, followed by Zvjaginsev at 2853 and Svidler at 2837. The average age of the players is too tedious to calculate, especially since FIDE and ChessBase, for privacy reasons, have stopped publishing exact birth dates. We are sure someone will do it for us and send in the correct figure. 25% of all players in the Superfinal are called Alexander, 16.7% are named Evgeny and 16.7% Sergey or Sergei. Since there are a number of active chess players called Sergey Volkov our database lists this one as S1 (for Sergey-One).

Current standings

Previous Results

Links

• Official web site of the event
• All games so far in PGN