Favorites qualify to quarters in London

The London Super Sixteen rapid tournament has started. The main event of the London Chess Classic takes place from December 11th to December 15th at the Olympiad Conference Center in London, England. The tournament brings together many of the best players of the World as well as two qualifiers from the Open section of the London Chess Classic.

Players were divided into four groups initially, to play a double round robin between them and determine two qualifiers to the knock out stages.

Eager fans going to see the last day of the group stage

Daniel King shows his highlights of the day

Round 5

The round today kicked off with a win by Adams (right) against McShane. White misplayed the Ruy Lopez and was arguably always worse. Anand risked almost nothing in his game against Istratescu and the French was able to achieve a comfortable position from the opening, but one that didn't really let him fight for more than half a point.

Kramnik was a too solid today and this almost backfired. Sadler's active pieces were certainly more important than his weak isolated pawn. At the end however he was unable to make progress and a draw was agreed. Svidler took advantage of a mistake by Rowson to emerge up a pawn and then eventually convert it, guaranteeing his spot in the knockout.

Gelfand played a known riskless variation against Nakamura and they drew in 25 moves, making both of them unreachable for Jones and Polgar could only qualify with two consecutive victories. However Jones took care of that as he beat Polgar in a very wild Dragon Sicilian.

Howell suffered what must definitely have been the heartbreak of the tournament. He was in a winning position against Caruana the entire game, but a silly blunder in move 45 made his position bad, and a subsequent blunder evaporated his chances to even obtain a draw. The final standings would've changed dramatically had Howell won this game. Short played a nice aggressive game against Sutovsky and won in good style.

Round 6

The last round in action, but some of the results were not so important

Round six was played with many games that didn't matter that much for the final standings. The top two players from each group advanced and in a few cases this was already set in stone.

Adams and Anand were already qualified, but they played an interesting game in which surely Anand was simply winning as he was up a piece; however his technique was faulty and Adams escaped with a draw. Istratescu gave McShane a lesson on why the Hippopotamus is not a playable defense at the 2700 level.

Finally someone didn't choose 1.e4

Sadler needed to win his last game to have a chance at qualifying. He had the opportunity to do so when Svidler blundered a pawn on move 29, but Sadler missed it and once that window was closed there was no other way for him to win. Kramnik drew Rowson from a dubious opening and advanced with Svidler.

Nakamura found himself in an endgame down a pawn against Polgar but he never had any serious difficulties in holding the draw. Meanwhile Jones finished his tournament with two strong victories, the last one being against Gelfand. The game was very nice, but unfortunately this was not enough for him to qualify.

Short played two games against Caruana in this tournament, and it is hard to say in which one he was lost quicker, but in any case neither was a serious contest and Caruana brushed him off the board. For Short it didn't really matter anymore as even a victory by Howell would not have been enough to catch him. Howell actually lost his last game against Sutovsky who at least didn't leave the tournament empty handed.

Results

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Quarter-Finals match ups:

Schedule

Photographs by Ray Morris-Hill

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be 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.