Gibraltar: Four Amigos and the Battle of the Sexes

The four amigos

Report after round four by John Saunders

Yes, I’m messing with your brain again. In the film there were three amigos. At the end of round four of the Gibraltar Masters, played at the Caleta Hotel, there were four young men, aged between 18 and 25, in the lead. Chess is increasingly a young person’s game. By the end of play the four leaders with a 4/4 maximum score were Eduardo Iturrizaga from Venezuela, Le Quang Liem of Vietnam, Nikita Vitiugov of Russia and Dariusz Swiercz of Poland. The group of seventeen players on 3½ included Vassily Ivanchuk and Gata Kamsky who have recovered from their slow starts.

Dariusz Swiercz, who is from Poland and just 18, produced the surprise of the round with his defeat of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France. But perhaps we should not be too surprised as Dariusz is already rated 2627 and won the 2011 World Junior Championship in India. He and the French GM (also a former winner of the World Junior title, incidentally) went toe to toe in a complex game of fighting chess.

Le Quang Liem, with his previous successes in the big Aeroflot and Moscow tournaments, is one of the most successful open tournament players in the world, and the Gibraltar Masters title would be a big feather in his cap. In the fourth round he came up against Iván Salgado López of Spain and won with smooth positional chess, capitalising on his opponent’s entombed bishop.

23-year-old Eduardo Iturrizaga is Venezuela’s first and as yet only GM, who first served notice of his strength when he defeated Sergei Tiviakov in the first round of the 2009 FIDE World Cup. He outplayed former women’s prize winner Nana Dzagnidze but still the position was not entirely clear when Nana made an error at the end.

Nikita Vitiugov comes from St Petersburg, where he was born in 1987 when it was still in the Soviet Union. Like Le Quang Liem, he is something of an open tournament specialist and he tied for first with the Vietnamese super-GM at the 2011 Aeroflot Open. He beat the Estonian GM Kaido Kulaots.

V is for Venezuela Vietnam

Report after round five by John Saunders

How many countries in the world can you name with names beginning with “V”? I’ve given a clue to two of them in the title. If you’re good at this sort of trivia question, you might also come up with Vanuatu and Vatican City. Sadly, we have no representatives in the tournament from the latter two states (maybe next year), but we do have two extremely strong players from Venezuela and Vietnam, both of whom started the fifth round on 4/4.

Venezuela’s Eduardo Iturrizaga might have been better in the early part of the game against Vietnam’s Le Quang Liem. As so often, the fateful move was made right before the time control and the killer move was a zwischenzug, or intermezzo move, depending on your preference for chess jargon.

The game between 100-percenters was won by Nikita Vitiugov of Russia in what was quite a smooth positional style against the teenage Polish GM Dariusz Swiercz. It was a good demonstration of the quiet but venomous strength of the English Opening.

Leaders after round five

That left Nikita Vitiugov and Le Quang Liem as the two remaining players on 5/5, with six players on 4½, namely Yu Yangyi, David Navara, Vassily Ivanchuk, Gawain Jones, Kiril Georgiev and Vladislav Tkachiev.

• Full standings of 150 players are here

Top rankings after round six

• Full standings of 150 players are here

Video report, of which there are hours and hours to be found here.

And now for something completely different

During the afternoon, between 3pm and about 8pm, the playing area is a serious place of work, as befits a major international tournament, but from 9pm onwards players and spectators can relax and let their hair down. The other night we had the team blitz event, in which players make up adhoc teams of four to play against each other. A lot of fun, though played with some intensity.

On Saturday night the tournament hosted a new event called the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ rapidplay match, held on a single giant-sized board in the restaurant of the Caleta Hotel, with two teams of six – men versus women – taking turns to move, without colluding. Given that it was a new idea, we didn’t know how it would work, but it went down a storm with the watching audience in the room and on the balcony. The two teams, had they been representing one country, would have been good enough to be strong contenders for the gold medals at an Olympiad.

The men were Gata Kamsky (USA), Gawain Jones (England), Emil Sutovsky (Israel), Maxime
Vacher-Lagrave (France), Le Quang Liem (Vietnam) and Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria)

The women were Jovanka Houska (England), Nana Dzagnidze (Georgia), Zhao Xue (China),
Tania Sachdev (India), Valentina Gunina (Russia) and Victoria Cmilyte (Lithuania)

GM Kiril Georgiev making a move in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’

A miment of anxiety as Chinese GM Zhao Xue makes a move

It was designed as a bit of fun and the players entered into the spirit right away. You can see videos and still photos on our website. Most photos you see of Gata Kamsky and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave sitting at the board show them to be poker-faced...

...but here they were clowning around like schoolkids and playing to the crowd,

... while the women players were sisterly and giving each other encouragement,

... and squealing with glee when they beat the men in the second game.

Maybe soon the more competitive participants of six-a-side chess (shouldn’t it be seven-a-side?) will be dreaming up new types of tactical tricks to bamboozle the opposition. For example, it is important to think whereabouts on the board you want your opponent to have to make their next move, and see whether you can arrange for them to have to walk the longest distance and lift the heaviest piece.

Have you seen how big these pieces are? At my time of life I’m not sure I could play the move ‘Qa1x(Q)h8’ without straining my back and getting a little out of breath. Another case of modern chess favouring younger players, dammit.

It is certainly great fun. Grandmaster of ceremonies Stuart Conquest, armed with a microphone and a wicked sense of humour, entered into the spirit with his running commentary, which wasn’t always as even-handed as it might have been. Take the following position...

The women have just played Qd3. Stuart’s helpful piece of advice to the men’s team: "Guys, your d6 pawn is under attack!" This got a big laugh from the watching audience who, like Stuart, were hoping that they would miss the threat of Qxh7 mate. (Sadly, they didn't.) This was the deciding game of three and, surprisingly in view of what looks like a great position for White, the men won. Boo! But the good news was that the event helped raise £1,000 for charity, and winning captain presented the cheque to Shirley Callaghan, wife of tournament organiser Brian Callaghan.

Photos of the Battle of the Sexes by MonRoi – Zelka Malobabic

Links Official tournament site All games in zipped PGN The most important games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

Copyright Saunders/ChessBase