Qatar 2015 Rd3: Brilliancies and great escapes

Qatar Masters 2015

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It is only fair to start the day’s summary with the two players left at a perfect 100%: Anish Giri and Li Chao. Both played in very much their own styles with great efficiency. Playing Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Anish Giri got what can only be described as the sort of position he lives for: a tangible advantage in an endgame that he could grind to his heart’s delight. That is precisely what he did, forcing capitulation after 60 moves. Although it was one of the longest games of the day, it was not the longest, but more on that later.

Wojtaszek (left) enjoyed found himself in quicksand (Anish Giri was the quicksand), sinking little
by little, with no chance to save himself. Nothing a visit to the ol' battle cruiser won't drown away.

Li Chao was the first to reach 3.0/3, with an absolutely merciless massacre of the strong Indian GM Sethuruman that ended in just 26 moves. The Indian played a poor Queen’s Gambit Accepted that left him saddled with weaknesses very early on, and things went downhill from there.

World Champion Magnus Carlsen faced the talented IM Daniil Yuffa (2504 FIDE), who had beat Bologan the day before, but the Norwegian was in form and built a winning position that won after 27 moves. The other leaders from round two had fairly uneventful games, which is not a criticism of the struggles but merely the lack of drama.

It was Magnus Carlsen's best game so far, leaving no doubt at any point on what the result would be

This was far from the case of Vladimir Kramnik, who came to the event as world no. 2 and knocking on the 2800 door once more. Playing black, he faced Italian GM Daniel Vocatura, and the quiet Giuoco Piano (AKA the Italian Game) yielded a good fight that led nowhere in the end, or at least until move 35, when many pieces had come off, and the great Russian dropped a vital pawn that suddenly left him gasping for air. As it progressed it seemed as if the Italian would be scoring a near historic win over Kramnik, but what goes around comes around.

Vladimir Kramnik buckled down, showing all his resourcefulness

In Kramnik’s magnificent games collection DVD by ChessBase, he describes his first forays into the absolute elite players, and the foremost difference he noticed between them and players only 50-100 Elo less: their resilience. He explains that in spite of building winning or near winning positions, he simply could not believe how they managed to constantly keep the game alive, forcing him to fight for every centimeter of progress, while other ‘merely’ strong grandmasters would have collapsed long before. This can now describe his own play as the Italian discovered, and after struggling to convert his advantage, a small slip was all it took for the dream to end and a draw was the result.

On a much smaller scale, credit needs to be given to 12-year-old Alireza Firouzja, hero of round one with a win over Tregubov, but a loss in round two. In round three, playing white, he faced German GM Rasmus Svane, who was determined to not be the latest scalp of the prepubescent. He took great risks, but the young Iranian played well and achieved a winning position by move 28. The problem was that he had less than one minute left on the clock, and computer scores of +1 or +2 are meaningless in such cases. By the time they made time control, He was much worse, and the German grandmaster seemed well on his way to a full point. However, White’s resilience was not to be underestimated, and in what seemed a riskless position for Black, a small mistake led to a superb sequence that allowed White to save the game. Impressive.

Alireza Firouzja - Rasmus Svane

The longest game by far was the absurd (for wont of a better word) ending between IM Sopiko Guramishvili and IM Roven Vogel, in which the German found himself down two pieces at move 66 in an endgame with no chances whatsoever, and decided to play to the bitter end. Sopiko obliged him, and picked off the last pawns one by one, driving his king all over the board with checks until she mated his lone king 50 moves later on move 116 with her rook, bishop, and knight. Go figure.

When Mamedyarov takes off, there are few as creative and brilliant

The best game of the round was without a doubt the win by Shakhriyar Mamedyarov over Aleksander Lenderman, which was nothing short of spectacular. In fact the American grandmaster was so impressed (we presume) that he actually let the Azeri grandmaster play out the final mate on the board.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - Aleksander Lenderman

Full report by IM Sagar Shah to follow...

Photos from the official site by Katerina Savina

Pairings/Results of Round 3 on 2015/12/22 at 15:00

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