Khanty Rd10: Jakovenko!

The fourth and final stage of the 2014-2015 Grand Prix Series. This tournament is specially important as it will determine the winner and runner up of this year, both of which will automatically qualify for the 2015 Candidates Tournament - the winner of that will challenge Magnus Carlsen to the World Championship Match! The tournament is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Ugra, Russia from May 13 to May 27.

Round Ten

The proud flags of the participants in Ugra

Gelfand, Boris ½-½ Tomashevsky, Evgeny
Sacrificing a pawn in order to equalize when Black gets his material back seems to be all the rage in opening theory. Tomashevsky did that very successfully today. Gelfand might have had the tiniest of pulls at the end of the game, but it was already very close to equal.

Solid Evgeny Tomashevsky

Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime ½-½ Svidler, Peter
A solid Spanish for two players that are not in contention for anything, really. The draw was reached after several trades in a locked position.

MVL has one more game to play before he can finish this tournament and forget about it

Jobava, Baadur 1-0 Dominguez, Leinier
Jobava is the type of player who can be dead last in the tournament, and he is still incredibly strong psychologically and is always a very strong threat. Dominguez, who before this round was still tied for first, suffered a tough defeat at the hands of the Georgian player.

Dominguez falls down to a tie for fourth

In a still positionally complicated battle, Dominguez decided to give up his dark-squared bishop for his opponent's centralized knight. This created an opposite colored bishop situation on the board, but it heavily favored Jobava. White's superior pawn structure coupled with the excellent bishop on e3 - blocking the e4 pawn and safeguarding the kingside - were enough to give him positional advantages to work with. He played with expertise, precision and patience and won a nice point.

Grischuk, Alexander ½-½ Giri, Anish
A pretty complex game. Grischuk certainly had the better position throughout the entire game. His structure was more flexible and he had the opportunities to break in the center, not to mention his knight on b6 was particularly annoying. Even in the final position it did seem that the Russian had the better chances, but the players agreed to a draw.

Grischuk had the better chances today, but did not convert

Caruana, Fabiano ½-½ Nakamura, Hikaru
Another Dragon! Unfortunately trades were heavy today - after Caruana "sacrificed" a bishop (the minor piece could not be taken as Nakamura's king would simply have been too exposed), Nakamura retaliated by taking a seemingly poisoned pawn on h2. The players traded a few blows but the endgame resulted in a draw.

Needing two draws to qualify for the Candidates one wouldn't have thought of playing the Sicilian Dragon!

Jakovenko, Dmitry 1-0 Karjakin, Sergey
An excellent game by Jakovekno. First, at the expense of his structure, he won the pair of bishops. This gave him a great deal of control over the dark squares, and this became even more significant when his bishop landed on d6. Black's queen was suddenly trapped in the middle of the board, but Karjakin obtained a rook, a knight and a pawn in compensation. Jakovenko proceeded to play in both flanks to try to bring down Karjakin's fortress, and he succeeded in doing so after a long struggle - one that was not void of mistakes in mutual time trouble.

With this result Jakovenko puts his fate in his own hands: a win against Nakamura tomorrow seals the deal and he will qualify for the Candidates.

Standings

Current Grand Prix Standings:

Caruana - 370

Nakamura - 347

Jakovenko - 310

Round Ten Games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Photos from the official website by Kirill Merkurev

Schedule

Links Official tournament site Download 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 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.