FIDE Grand Prix - Geneva: Off to a flying start!

The Grand Prix is being organized by Agon Limited, the commercial partner of the World Chess Federation, the game’s governing body. Agon has the exclusive commercial rights to organize the cycle of the World Championship.

Each Grand Prix has a prize fund of 130,000 euros, and the Geneva Grand Prix is supported by EG Capital Advisors, Kaspersky Lab and S.T. Dupont.

Twenty-four of the world’s best players are competing in the Grand Prix, with 18 of them participating in each of the tournaments. They will play a nine round swiss open played at 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 tournament runs from June 6-15, with a rest day on June 11 after round five. Each round starts at 2 pm local time (8 am New York time).

Round two

Photos by FIDE

A pleasant surprise is the sudden resurgence of Teimour Radjabov. Two wins in the first two rounds, and both were excellent games at that.

Teimour Radjabov - Pavel Eljanov

I guess by now the participants of the Grand Prix realize what they are playing for - two qualification spots to the Candidates and not much beyond that. Even the modest prize money announced for this year's cycle has not been paid on time, much to the chagrin of the players.

The chess internet is abuzz with anti-AGON sentiment, and, I suppose, the readers expect me to weigh in on this. Sorry to disappoint you, but no further hint of criticism directed at AGON will come from the author of these words. You are free to think AGON has paid me a million dollars to keep mum.

Back to chess. Levon Aronian's qualification hopes wedge on winning the two remaining tournaments. Today he played with reckless abandon suitable for a must-win situation, and it paid off.

Levon Aronian, genius at work

Dmitry Jakovenko - Levon Aronian

Another heavyweight, Alexander Grischuk, kept pace by giving a clinical performance in the following game, which I'm sure will delight the fans of the Classical Ruy Lopez.

Richard Rapport used an antiquated method to defend the Closed Ruy, and was shown by Grischuk why it had fallen into disuse

Alexander Grischuk - Richard Rapport

Not to be outdone, the Grand Prix leader, Shakhriar Mamedyarov got on the board as well.

Shakhiryar Mamedyarov - Ernesto Inarkiev

Ernesto Inarkiev recently went public with his displeasure with the last moment decision by the Russian Chess Federation to take him out of the lineup for the World Team Championship. Ernesto mentioned his declining to play in the European Individual Championship in favor of preparing for the World Teams, and the disappointment he felt when it didn't happen. Inarkiev admitted that his sub-par play in the Moscow Grand Prix might have contributed to this unfortunate turn of events, and said he was looking forward to rebounding in Geneva.

All that sounded quite reasonable, but seeing how his replacement, Vladimir Fedoseev, played in the above mentioned tournaments – gaining 23.3 rating points in the process – doesn't offer much support to his case. Neither does what Inarkiev did today. Chess can be ruthless sometimes.

No doubt, this is how Hou Yifan feels today, as she came ever so close to winning today.

Hou Yifan was just one step away from winning her game

Hou Yifan - Alexander Riazantsev

So, the race is on. Already we have six players with a plus score, soon to be joined by other contenders. I expect quite a line of separation between stronger and more ambitious players and the also-runs to dominate the course of events in Geneva. There's no way a mere +3 is going to win this one.

Standings after two rounds

Links

• Official tournament site
• All games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.