Gibraltar Rd08: The Lull before the Storm

Photos by John Saunders and Sophie Triay

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2017

The Tradewise Gibraltar Open is one of the strongest and best organised events of its kind in the world. Anyone who knows the moves (and pays the entry fee) can take part, and perhaps face top participants like Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave or Hikaru Nakamura. The tournament lasts from January 23 (opening) to February 4. The location is very balmy: ten hours of daylight, average day temperature 16° C, warm sea temperatures, beautiful scenery. Paradise!

Gibraltar 08: The Lull before the Storm

An American, a Frenchman, a Chinese and a Spaniard led the standings after seven rounds of play in this ten-round tourney. A number of times, you comes across a situation of unusual tranquility, so stable that you are sure something is wrong.

At the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters, the eighth and the antepenultimate round saw as many as ten draws in the top twelve boards. Maybe this is natural as most of the higher seeds were playing against the in-form lot among the 72 grandmasters in the fray. In addition, black won the only two games that did produce results in the top-twelve.

David Anton Guijarro

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave defended with the Gruenfeld against David Anton Guijarro where he gave up a pawn but there never really was anything of note.

Maxime speaks about the game and his chances

Hikaru Nakamura defended with the Queen’s Gambit Declined against Yu Yangyi. Nakamura solved the problems quite easily and after some mass exchanges in the middlegame, the players just repeated the position.

Nakamura discusses his chances

The big-ticket British derby between Nigel Short and Michael Adams was washed out due to repetition.

Short had recently criticized Emil Sutovsky and Ju Wenjun for repeating the position in their game earlier in the tournament and committing a ‘sin’ by doing so. Short, of all people, must know that to sin is human but to forgive is divine.

Nigel Short on his game, draws, and more...

Emil Sutovsky faced Veselin Topalov’s Caro-Kann with a pawn sacrifice on the rim of the kingside.

Veselin declined and continued to make the usual Caro-Kann moves. But after a few moves, when Sutovsky castled kingside, the Bulgarian must have believed that he has lulled the Israeli into leaving the pawn en prise for too long. Topalov saw no reason to be generous and picked the pawn. Sutovsky generated tons of pressure on the queenside but Topalov had everything covered.

That is until he blundered on the 23^rd move. His agony, though, was short-lived as Sutovsky failed to take advantage of his position and moved his knight to b3 instead of continuing milking the queenside immediately. However, Sutovsky still had the pressure and a draw in hand. The following critical position arose:

Sutovsky, with white, has to make a life-and-death decision. He is a pawn down but has more space on the queenside. How best to use it? Playing with the space advantage is a truly enjoyable approach to chess as you get to just crush your opponents as Daniel King explains in Power Play 13. The correct move would mean Sutovsky goes home with a draw despite being a pawn down, but an incorrect one should lead to a negative result, which is what transpired in the game.

Topalov talks about his game. Note the fit of giggles — he had been discussing the term 'premature' with another well-known grandmaster, but that conversation apparently had some hidden meaning!

Women’s world no. 1 took on women’s world no. 2 in the Chinese derby played in French territory on the rock of Gibraltar.

Ju Wenjun was celebrating her 26th birthday. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she must have known that a win here takes her across the 2600 barrier.

It was a razor-sharp game with both players punching each other in turns, both fighters holding equality until near the time control when Yifan blundered decisively:

White has an opportunity to force a draw in this position. In time trouble, the world champion missed her chance and played 32.Qd6-d5 instead. Ju rang the bell to Yifan's castle and delivered a delicious mate. She became the fifth woman after Judit Polgar, Koneru Humpy, Anna Muzychuck, and Hou Yifan herself, to cross the 2600 mark.

The birthday girl speaks

Indian GM S.P. Sethuraman handed his in-form Austrian opponent IM Valentin Dragnev a nasty surprise.

World's youngest grandmaster Deac Bogdan-Daniel managed to hold Peter Svidler to a draw.

Fabiano Caruana won from the black side of a Ruy Lopez by employing the Deferred Steinitz set up. Caruana got easy and dynamic play with pawn breaks on the queenside and center to win against Indian GM G.N. Gopal.

When asked before the tournament who he would like to play in the tourney, Hikaru Nakamura did not think twice before naming his rival Fabiano Caruana. Dreams do come true — the ninth round will witness an American derby on the third board. Veselin Topalov has joined the erstwhile leaders and has a not-so-difficult task of beating David Anton Guijarro with white, while MVL is playing Yu Yangyi on the first board.

Only two rounds of play remain. The eighth round was too tranquil to be the end. You do know what is coming, don’t you?

Battle of Sexes Clip:

Watch LIVE with commentary!

Top Pairings and Results of Round 08:

Top rankings after Round 8

Top pairings Round 9 on 2017/02/01 at 15.00

Get the complete results and pairings: Masters + Challengers A + Amateur A

Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the 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.