Qatar 2015 round one: A day of surprises

Round one: A day of surprises

Report from Doha by Sagar Shah

What a start to the Qatar Masters Open 2015! High quality settings, some sparkling games of chess, and loads of upsets. But before getting in to the specifics about round one let me share my experience as a participant of this event. Before arriving in Doha I played at the London Chess Classic. Over there, too, the World Champion was present, and so were other great players like Anish Giri, Levon Aronian, Vishy Anand, Alexander Grischuk. But I wasn’t playing in the same tournament as them. While the ten players faced each other in the elite section, mortals like me battled it out in the FIDE Open. The best I could manage was sitting in the second row of the auditorium at a distance of ten meters from these world class GMs.

At the Qatar Masters, things are completely different! You get to play in the same tournament as the world-class super GMs. This means that you can casually walk over to their boards and watch their games in close proximity. Sometimes these top players come over to your board to kibitz your game! For many of us just playing in the same tournament as these legends and being in the same tournament hall as them is enough to get our money’s worth. This unique opportunity of trying to match your wits against the best players in the world is only offered in a few tournaments in a calendar year, and the Qatar Open is one of them.

A panoramic view of the beautiful playing hall

Fresh from his exploits at the London Chess Classic,
Magnus Carlsen faced an opponent rated 336 points below him

Nino Batsiashvili had the opportunity of her lifetime to battle it out against the World Champion

Ivanchuk has a closer look at the game as the 2015 Georgian Women’s Champion
sensationally held the World Champion to a draw in 57 moves

The opening didn’t really go so well for Magnus, who played the Benko Gambit with reversed colours. But after some inaccuracies by his opponent the Norwegian had a typical slight edge, which he more often than not converts. This was increased to a tangible advantage, and it seemed as if Nino Batsiashvili would bite the dust. But on the 32nd move Carlsen made a highly uncharacteristic mistake, allowing his opponent to activate her rook. After that the moves just flowed for the Georgian player as she secured the half point without any particular difficulties. It must be said that Nino played much higher than her rating and this is a clear indication that the World Champion will not have it easy in the first open event that he is playing after a gap of eight years.

Vladimir Kramnik did score the full point, but it was only after a tense struggle
where both players had their share of chances

Bela Khotenashvili tried her best against Kramnik but couldn’t emulate the success of her team-mate

Here's a question from the game analysis below:
can't Black simply recapture the knight – and why not?

Anish Giri calculates the final winning continuation
which gave him victory over India’s latest GM S.L. Narayanan

Anish played a game which every chess coach in the world would condemn. After twelve moves he had developed only his queen to the c2 square, while all the other pieces were on their initial square. On the other hand his opponent had castled, got out his knight, centralized his queen, and his rook stood on e8. Yet the position was nicely balanced. That’s what hyper-modern play is all about. It was a highly interesting battle which is worth going over.

Sergey Karjakin had little difficulty in dispatching his Egyptian opponent IM Ezat Mohamed

Wesley So played the talented young Russian Aleksandra Goryachkina. The American grandmaster made sure that he gave his opponent absolutely no chance as he slowly but surely converted his position in to a win.

Chinese number one at this event Li Chao started off his campaign with a win over Samy Shoker

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov has faced Alexander Grischuk 38 times in over the board play, but it was the first time he faced the Russian’s wife Natalia Zhukova. The Azeri grandmaster won the game in 49 moves.

Evgeny Tomashevsky showed what a virtuoso endgame player he is by winning
a 4 vs 3 knight endgame with pawns on the same side against IM Vahap Sanal

The battle between two Indians: Pentala Harikrishna survived a few anxious moments
before he drew against the talented Aravindh Chithambaram

The 16-year-old Aravindh will take on Magnus Carlsen tomorrow. By the way Aravindh already has a +1 score against the World Champion – he beat him in a simultaneous exhibition in Chennai in 2013!

Dmitry Jakovenko’s 14-year-old opponent IM Amin Tabatabaei had him on the ropes. The Russian had to
press the emergency brakes and somehow draw the game in an opposite coloured bishop endgame.

The defending champion Yu Yangyi – he won the 2014 Qatar Masters –
made a solid start with a fine win over GM Neelotpal Das

One of the biggest upsets of the round was surely Wei Yi’s defeat…

… at the hands of Indian IM Shardul Gagare, 260 rating points lower

Wei Yi as Black (to play) resigned in this position.
Can you find the best way for him to put up resistance?

The game was quite a fine positional feat by Shardul. However, in the last (above) position it seemed that the Chinese GM missed a brilliant defensive opportunity. Whether the game would have ended in a draw or not is a different question altogether – the brilliant defensive move had to be tried.

Nikita Vitiugov, 2724, had pretty much a forgettable day as he lost to…

…IM Xu Yinglun from China, rated 254 points below Vitiugov

Ex-FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov continues with the same hairstyle
he sported in the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in October

Radoslaw Wojtaszek from Poland beat GM Irina Krush with black

Vassily Ivanchuk tried quite hard but couldn’t win against IM Ma Zhonghan

The highly original and creative attacker Anton Korobov

12-year-old Alireza Firouzja from Iran scored a huge upset by beating GM Pavel Tregubov

Providing free drinking water is not so uncommon in many tournaments…

…but at Qatar the organizers went a step further and provided free cookies and biscuits…

… but also freshly cut fruit!

A lot of people are watching the Qatar Masters Open 2015. Are you one amongst them?
Be sure not to miss the round two action at 15.00 hours local time.

Watch it live on Playchess!

When the games are running, clicking on the above link will take you to our live broadcast. It is free and open to all – as a Premium Account member you have access to the Live Book, Chat, chess engine analysis – all in your browser, on a notebook, tablet or even your smartphone. And the Let's Check function will show you what the most powerful computers in the world think of the current position, as each move is being played. Below are the four most-watched boards.

Note that you can download PGNs of the running games (to analyse with your regular software) and even start an engine in the above broadcast window. The arrow buttons allow you to play through the moves backwards and forwards. The f and g-buttons are self-explanatory.

Did you notice something special about the pictures in this report? We have included shots of each of the 2700+ participant playing in the tournament.

Photos by Amruta Mokal of ChessBase India

Pairings/Results of Round 1 on 20.12.2015 at 15:00

Schedule for Playchess Commentary

Links Official tournament site Download 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.