Medias Kings Rd10: Carlsen-Karjakin draw, Carlsen wins Medias 2011

ROMGAZ and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade” of Bucharest are staging a double round robin tournament with six top GMs: the world's second highest ranked player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway; Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk, currently the world's number five; Sergey Karjakin, former child prodigy and youngest GM of all time; top US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, clear winner of this year's Wijk aan Zee tournament; Teimour Radjabov, one of Azerbaijan's top GMs, and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, the best Romanian player. The competition is taking place from June 11th to 22nd 2011 in Medias, Romania.

Round ten commentary by GM Dorian Rogozenco

The 5th edition of the Kings‘ Tournament is over. The leaders’ game Carlsen-Karjakin finished in a draw after 30 moves, when neither player was willing to take too much risk. Thus both players shared 1-2 places. According to the tie-break rules the first place is taken by Magnus Carlsen.

Before the game a handshake – former boy wonders Carlsen and Karjakin

After the game an animated analysis session with Dorian Rogozenco

The players, here Sergey Karjakin, enter the moves in ChessBase themselves

... and often enjoy moments of hilarity which the audience can see in the video

On his blog Magnus wrote: "I’d like to forget my game against co-leader S.Karjakin as quickly as possible. On another off-day (the first was round six against Nakamura), I really missed a lot and quickly squandered my slight opening advantage. Knowing that a draw would provide the 1st prize on better tie-break and 1st place on the July 1, 2011 FIDE rating list, the result itself was fully acceptable today."

Radjabov-Nisipeanu was an exciting draw after the Romanian GM sacrificed a pawn on move 14. Black got sufficient counterplay and in the end Nisipeanu might have even played on, had he not missed a subtle move in his calculations.

Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Teimour Radjabov join in the press room post-game session

... and have just as much fun with Dorian Rogozenco as Magnus and Serge before them

The only decisive game of the round was Ivanchuk’s win with the white pieces against Nakamura.

Vassily Ivanchuk explains to Tournament President Elisabeta Polihroniade which move
he intends to play (see video interview below for more on the reason for his choice)

The first move, 1.d4, is executed by Tournament Director Emil-Dănuţ Gabăr

As the Ukrainian GM explained at the press conference, he didn’t really prepare for the game. Therefore when thinking what to play on his very first move Ivanchuk decided to listen to an advice given to him by a girl on Skype the night before: “Please play 1.d4”. And he replied “I will play 1.d4” … I would suggest everyone to watch the video taken after the game, it’s really entertaining.

In the game White went for the Exchange Variation against the Slav, which has the reputation to be very close to a draw. However, Ivanchuk employed a slightly unusual move order and achieved what he was aiming for: a slight, but stable advantage, which White confidently converted into a full point.

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All photos by Ionut Anisca

Final standings

Note that at the bottom of the table Ivanchuk came fifth and Nisipeanu sixth, since the number of wins was the first tiebreak criterium. At the top there was no tie-break match because Carlsen has better Sonneborn-Berger, which made him the winner. According to the rules there would be a tie-brake match only if everything were equal. Karjakin qualifies for the Grand Slam Masters Final in Sao Paulo/Bilbao. The above rating increase figures are rounded down – the way the ratings are calculated (game by game) Magnus Carlsen has in reality gained 5.8 = six rating points. He is now at 2821 in live ratings, four points ahead of the previous leader Vishy Anand (2817). This is what the (inofficial) live rating list of top twenty look like after the Medias event:

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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