A Magnuficent Sunday at the LCC 2015 (1)

The 7th London Chess Classic, England's premier tournament, took place at its traditional venue of Kensington Olympia from Friday December 4th to Sunday December 13th. The main event, the strongest ever held in the UK, was a nine-round ten-player super tournament played at a rate of 40 moves in two hours, followed by the rest of the game in one hour, with a 30-second increment from move 41. The overall prize fund was $300,000, with the winner getting $75,000.

A Magnuficent Sunday at LCC 2015 – Part one

Report from London by Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal

At 11.38 p.m. Maxime Vachier Lagrave shook Carlsen’s hand, in resignation, and the World Champion became the London Chess Classic and Grand Chess Tour 2015 winner! But, wait, aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? What exactly were the players doing until almost midnight, when the final round of the event had actually started ten hours earlier? Well, let’s rewind the clocks to 2.p.m. on Sunday afternoon of the 13th of December 2015. The ninth round of the London Chess Classic was just about to begin and no one had an inkling of the things that were about to follow! For careful eyes, however, there were already some signs of what was about to transpire!

Believe it or not, Magnus Carlsen and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who turned out to be the
last two men standing in the event, were ironically the first ones to arrive at the tournament hall

Michael Adams, Anish Giri and a tired Veselin Topalov before the start of the final round

Hikaru Nakamura and Vishy Anand were on 3.0 and 3.5 points and had no chance of fighting for the top spots

That's how! Magnus’s mother Sigrun turned up for the last round of the event

This is how things looked before the final round began

Anish had little difficulty in neutralizing Anand’s white pieces using, you guessed, the Berlin

+2 in London and +5 in the Grand Chess Tour, without a single loss – that’s the super solid Anish for you

Commentator Nigel Davies said, “We are looking at scenarios when the main games could end at something like 9 p.m. and then we would have the tiebreaks. We could be in for a long night, maybe until 3 a.m., and then if someone was to find a flaw in the tiebreak system, I cannot imagine what would happen!” To which Anand exclaimed, “That’s my dream scenario! It would be nice to wake up in the morning and read about it!”

With Anish already on 5.5/9, the onus was now on Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to play for a win in order to finish sole first at the London Chess Classic. But this was not at all easy, as first of all he was facing Aronian and secondly he had the black pieces.

Maxime tried his level best, also took off his jacket, but that was not enough for the full point

Draw Maestros: the game between Michael Adams and Fabiano Caruana ended peacefully

Before the start of the game, tournament director Malcolm Pein announced that “in modern day chess, winning seven games in a row is called ‘doing a Caruana’, after his fantastic feat at the Sinquefield 2014. I wonder what they would call making nine draws on a trot. Maybe a Caruana-Adams!” It was sort of unbelievable but both Adams and Caruana made nine draws out of nine rounds at the London Chess Classic. Anish Giri was particularly happy, as he would be no longer called the most boring of the elite players: “Never, and I mean never in my life have I drawn all the games in any sort of tournament.” Of course Fabi must have been ruing his chance for missing out a win in one move against Alexander Grischuk with 46.Qg6 in the fifth round! [LINK]

Nakamura-Topalov wasn’t a particularly exciting Berlin and ended in a draw after 34 moves

The most rousing game of the round was definitely Magnus Carlsen’s win against Alexander Grischuk

With 5.5/9, Anish Giri and MVL had already booked their seats in the playoff. It was now up to either Carlsen or Grischuk to win and join them. The game began as a Sicilian Rossolimo but quickly turned wild as the Russian player repeated the same line with 7…g5!? that had been played against Carlsen by Topalov in the first round of the Sinquefield Cup 2015. It seemed like a pretty bad choice, as Carlsen clearly had a good feel for the position. He found the best moves and very soon put Grischuk under tremendous pressure. But then the World Champion began to go wrong. He took his queen far away, from the center of action, to a6, and then played in an extremely reckless fashion with Nb5. Before he even knew it, dark clouds had gathered around the white king with four black pieces attacking at the same time. Grischuk, however, was in his usual time pressure zone. He first missed a win and then many ways to draw the game. In the end he blundered and lost, allowing Magnus to join the leaders with 5.5/9.

The ChessBase cloud function Let's Check shows us the win instantaneosly – it was calculated
(up to 37 ply!) by the strongest engines running on the most powerful computers in the world.

Nothing can distract me now! Grischuk gets rid of his sweater
as his position against Magnus Carlsen became too hot to handle!

There is just no way you can keep the World Champion out of the thick of the action!

Final standings after nine rounds

Three players had qualified for the tiebreak playoffs. The reason why Magnus Carlsen was sitting pretty at the top was because he had defeated Alexander Grischuk who had more points than Hikaru Nakamura, Vishy Anand or Veselin Topalov whom Anish Giri and MVL had defeated. That’s the Sonneborn-Berger system in effect. The stage was thus set – Anish and Maxime would indulge in two rapid games of 25 minutes + 5 seconds increment, followed by an Armageddon in case of a tie, and the winner would take on Magnus Carlsen for another similar match for the London Chess Classic title.

-- Part two looking at the tiebreak drama indepth will follow tomorrow –

Schedule and results of the London Chess Classic 2015

Links Official tournament site Download all LCC games + KO games + Open games The 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 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.