Candidates R05: Fabiano’s Benoni!

The 2016 FIDE World Chess Candidates Tournament is a 14-round event, which determines the next Challenger to Magnus Carlsen's title, is taking place in Moscow from March 10–30. Eight players, including six of the World’s top-ten rated grandmasters. The time control is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move one. The guaranteed prize fund is US $420,000.

Candidates round five – Fabiano’s Benoni!

Report from Moscow by IM Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal

Note that ChessBase is doing daily one-hour roundup shows after each round

Yesterday we brought to you a video of the players entering the tournament venue. Today we went to the fifth floor and stood near the security check. One by one the players arrived and here's a video of that. Especially interesting is what Nakamura carries with him to drink and also how Veselin Topalov came to the tournament in a black suit and in great mood!

Levon Aronian – Fabiano Caruana 0.5-0.5

Levon Aronian came to the tournament hall in a calm and sedate mood,
but Caruana’s opening choice turned on the beast in him!

The most interesting game of round five was definitely the battle between Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana. Aronian opened the game with 1.d4. Caruana seemed like he wanted to go for the Queen’s Indian or the Queen’ Gambit Declined but suddenly shocked everyone with the Benoni!

Fabiano Caruana played the Modern Benoni which is quite risky
mainly because Black not only gives White space but also the central majority

Caruana on his choice of opening said, “I wanted to play the Benoni since last two months, but none of my opponents were allowing me to do so. Perhaps if I would have told them before the game that I wanted to play the Benoni I would have got half a dozen!”

Standing up from his board and watching the giant screen, Anish Giri had a smile on his face. When we asked him the reason for that, the Dutch GM replied, “I found it particularly entertaining that Fabiano played the Benoni. Not at the Vugar Gashimov Memorial or against Veselin Topalov, who is currently in the last place, but against Levon Aronian! I thought this must be a very deep choice, maybe his second Rustam Kasimdzhanov has gone crazy! He always seemed to me like a sane guy, but something must have happened! Well, he got away with it. I am sure Fabiano regretted his decision on many occasions. Levon gave away too many pawns and Fabiano escaped with a draw. At the end of the day you always wonder, wouldn’t it be easier to just play Queen’s Gambit and get away with a draw rather than create the whole spectacle! (smiles) [You can see the video of Anish saying the above in the Youtube embed below his game against Svidler]

The critical position of the game was reached on move twenty when Aronian, in textbook fashion, sacrificed a pawn with 20.e5 dxe5 21.f5! While this might seem surprising to some, it is in fact a very common positional pawn sacrifice. In this case it is used for an attack, but positionally too it is very sound. The bishop on g7 is shut down and the knight on d7 doesn’t get the e5 square. Meanwhile the white knight gets the e4 square. So all in all this is an excellent idea. Check the end of this article to find a clip from my DVD “Learn from the Classics” where I explain exactly this same idea.

In the game Aronian didn’t go for the move f5-f6. In the press conference he showed some of the ideas he had seen in this position and his imagination combined with accurate calculation of variations completely floored me! Aronian said, “I want to mate you!” He started the analysis with the move 24.h4!? and while this looks extremely slow, the idea is just majestic. After 24…Nxc4 25.h5! Qxd5 26.hxg6 hxg6 27.Qb3! the queen is transferred to the kingside and combined with a knight and a rook lift, it leads to a mating attack. Computers really don’t understand it at first but then realize how strong the attack is. And this position is one example why we consider Aronian to be a genius

Aronian: I got very excited and wanted to mate you. Caruana: I bring that out in you,
don’t I? Have a look at this highly entertaining press conference.

Veselin Topalov – Sergey Karjakin 0.5-0.5

The battle between the man-in-form (right) and the man out-of-form

Topalov has been having a pretty dismal event until now. Prior to the round he had a score of -2. But this was the perfect game to redeem himself. Firstly he was up against the tournament leader Sergey Karjakin and secondly he had the white pieces. Both the players blitzed through their initial moves and they reached the same position that was played between Anish Giri and Sergey Karjakin in the third round.

Let Topalov explain this move to us: “I just want to push the pawn to b4. In all other lines it is impossible to achieve that. It looks primitive but it was an interesting idea, at least for one game, and I think I got a very nice position.”

After making the move 11.Rb1!, Topalov got up from his chair looking quite confident,
and left Sergey to figure out the details of how to continue

The opening went very well for Veselin as he got a position with strong pressure on the hanging black pawns on c5 and d5! Sergey had won a nice game in the fourth round fighting against these pawns. And now in the fifth round, he was the one defending them! But his alertness and attention to detail was very high.

Karjakin had just played 14…Bf8 on the previous move. Topalov tried to build up the pressure on the d5 pawn with 15.Rb2!? And Sergey replied with 15…Bd6!? A very natural question that comes to mind is why didn’t the Russian play 14…Bd6 instead of Bf8? The answer lies in the fact that on 14…Bd6 the d5 pawn was hanging as the rook was on b1. But when the rook moved to b2, then after 15…Bd6 the d5 pawn is somehow not as appetizing as before because the b2 rook hangs in many lines. Such little things prove that Sergey is in excellent shape at the event.

Extremely focused and exploring every little detail in the position is Sergey Karjakin

Once the opening phase had passed, Black equalized the game and Karjakin had very little trouble holding the draw. With this win Karjakin maintains his lead by half a point while Topalov remains in the bottom of the table by the same margin.

Interview with Veselin Topalov about 11.Rb1!

This video contains Topalov's impression of the game and some very nice explanation of his novelty 11.Rb1

Anish Giri – Peter Svidler 0.5-0.5

“There are many people who open their games with Nf3, g3 or Nf3, e3 and win by force, like Vladimir Kramnik or Sergey Karjakin. But I am not one of those guys! Generally when I begin this way I do not have a clue about what I am doing!” That is how Anish started the press conference! Nf3 followed by g3 was a way to avoid Svidler’s excellent home preparation that he has been showing at this event.

“It is ironic that people are driving me to play my main opening, the Grunfeld, looking at weird move orders to play my absolute main opening that I have been playing for the last 25 years. Well, it is some sort of a compliment to my home preparation at this event.”

Anish surprised Peter with Nf3 followed by g3, and Peter surprised Anish by playing the move 7…a5 in the solid variation of the Grunfeld Defence. Svidler made an inaccuracy in the opening with 13…Bf5 and Anish managed to get an excellent position. White had wonderfully coordinated pieces, but Black’s position was resilient. In the end Peter was able to find some important resources like re-routing his bishop to c6 via d7 and Anish was short on time. The result was a draw in 30 moves.

I swear by my heart that all this was not home-preparation!

Anish Giri’s wife Sopiko Guramishvili waits patiently outside the press conference room

Anish seriously explains his game against Peter and then in his typical sense of humour tells us why he was smiling at the start of the round and why he has lost faith in the James Bond movies!

Viswanathan Anand – Hikaru Nakamura 0.5-0.5

Not many exciting moments in the game between Vishy Anand and Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura came well prepared to the game

“My third anti-Berlin in a row! [smiles]. I was trying to play against his doubled e-pawns. Sometimes if White manages to consolidate his structure, it can be a long game and black has to suffer a bit. I got my knight to e3, and he weakened his structure with d5-d4, but it didn’t seem enough.” This is how Anand explains his game against Nakamura.

Anand did play the move 10.a4, which was a novelty, but definitely not one of his scary innovations which would bring his opponents in a state of panic

To many of the viewers it seemed like the least interesting game of the day. There was only one open file, pieces got exchanged, there was no pawn tension in the position, no real outposts and no pawn breaks. This was a game where both the payers were fine with a draw and wanted to prepare themselves for the next encounter.

The walk to the conference room from the playing hall is always
friendly and jovial when the game has ended in a peaceful draw

All the players were made to sign around ten of these posters having AGON’s symbol on them

Anand talks about his game, what he was aiming for and how he intends to prepare for the next round.

Three local talents, GM Maxim Matlakov (right), Ildar Khairullin and Ian Nepomniachtchi are making it a point to come daily to the tournament hall and soak in the chess atmosphere of a tournament that they might well be playing after a few years.

Aeroflot Open heroes Sanan Sjugirov and Alexandr Predke were also here

Some couples preferred to watch the games…

…while some preferred to do commentary – like Pavel Tregubov and Alexandra Kosteniuk!

A good style sense is always appreciated in a chess tournament!

Sitting in the Candidates tournament hall in Moscow, and reading the Soviet Chess Strategy,
this man has taken all the right decisions in his bid to improve as a chess player!

And finally, here’s the promised lecture on the idea used by Aronian against Caruana – the positional pawn sacrifice with e5 dxe5 followed by f5. The same one was used by Botvinnik against Pomar in the Varna Olympiad 1962 and I cover it in my DVD Learn from the Classics.

Standings after five rounds

Pairings and results

Roundup broadcasts

ChessBase is doing roundup shows at the end of each round of the Candidates.

Here is the full schedule of future broadcasts – you need to be a premium member to watch

Roundup Commentary Schedule

• Official tournament site + live broadcast
• Download all games in PGN
• All ChessBase reports (+ reports on ChessBase India)