Zurich Blitz: Aronian crushes

Karjakin Simul

The festivities started in Zurich with a lecture and simul by one of the participants, Sergey Karjakin. After a brief lecture he played against guests from the Savory Chess Corner and from Bank Vontobel. In sixteen games the amateurs were only able to achieve two draws.

Sergey Karjakin is the 12th rated player in the World

A small lecture...

Followed by crushing people in the simul

The Blitz

Vladimir Kramnik with his daughter Daria and Nigel Short

Levon Aronian shaking hands with the man that makes the event possible: Oleg Skvortsov

The legend! Viktor Kortschnoj will be playing his own match in Zurich

Yanick Pelletier, the strongest Swiss player, with the sponsor and organizer

Natalia Skvortsov is one of the strong forces behind the tournament

A little musical performance before the battles...

The first round robin in Zurich pitched the grandmasters in a blitz event to determine their pairing order for the Classical. In such a small tournament, only five rounds, it is quite important to be able to have more whites than blacks, and this is the reward for finishing in the top half of the blitz portion. Today's blitz was not a close competition: three players dominated, and after four rounds it was already mathematically impossible for Karjakin, Kramnik or Nakamura to finish in the top half.

Round One

The first round started Anand's early domination of this tournament. He started out strong by defeating Karjakin in a long opposite colored bishop endgame. Karjakin clearly thought too much of his chances in the following position:

With two draws in the games Caruana-Nakamura and Aronian-Kramnik it was the Indian ex-World Champion that came out half a point ahead from the first set of fights.

Round Two

Three decisive games, and in what style! First Anand turned a bad position around very quickly:

Aronian convincingly outplayed Nakamura, showing that even in blitz simple concepts like pawn islands are very important. He cleanly won a superior endgame and relegated the American player back to 0.5/2, despite being one of the pre-tournament favorites to take the blitz event!

Finally Caruana finished off Karjakin in brutal style with a beautiful (though unnecessary) queen sacrifice:

Caruana showed that the pair of bishops is not always an advantage

Round Three

Aronian kept strong pace in round three

Caruana-Anand finished rather suddenly, but was still an interesting fight:

Aronian continued an excellent pace by winning his second game in a row. He beat Karjakin in a long, drawn out endgame in which again he entered with a slight advantage. With a draw in Kramnik-Nakamura the lead went to Anand and Aronian, both with 2.5/3.

Nothing more natural than a brief analysis after a blitz game

The big surprise, possibly, was that Karjakin started with 0.0/3! Caruana's 2.0/3 was a comfortable position for him to fight for more whites in the tournament, as from a practical point of view the reward for finishing third or first is the same.

Round Four

Karjakin put himself back into the fight by beating Kramnik... well, it was at least a morale victory as it would have taken a miracle for him to finish in the top three after his disastrous start.

Karjakin getting a small victory

Anand beat Nakamura in a great example of transformation of advantages in a rook endgame:

A nice finishing touch in a winning rook endgame

The Caruana-Aronian game had quite the incident! Despite being up a rook in the final position, Aronian grabbed a piece... and flung it across the room by accident! Seeing as this disturbed the peace of the game, a draw was agreed - which guaranteed that both Aronian and Caruana would start with more whites in the classical; it became mathematically impossible for Kramnik, Nakamura or Karjakin to catch Caruana or Aronian, much less Anand.

Round Five

Round five was necessary to play, of course, because the exact order of the pairings could not be determined until every result was counted, but it was already clear which players would finish in which half of the table.

After drawing his very first game, Aronian continued his winning streak by beating Anand and finally overtaking him in the standings. He showed, yet again, fantastic understanding of a very technical endgame, converting a slight advantage in the form of two bishops into a clean victory.

Anand lost to Aronian in the last round, but still had a great showing

Caruana continued with his excellent shape and defeated Kramnik, proving that there are no "unlosable positions" in blitz.

Nakamura was able to get a morale victory by beating Karjakin:

Interestingly second was shared between Caruana and Anand (with the tiebreak going to Caruana based on more blacks), who finished 1.5 points ahead of Nakamura, who was fourth, which is a massive difference in a five round event.

Photos from the blitz tournament and opening ceremony by Eteri Kublashvili

Blitz Final Standings

Replay All Blitz Games

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Brief impressions from Zurich by Frederic Friedel

Pure elegance and charm: Natalia Skvortsova with Marie-Laure Kramnik, wife of the former World Champion

And presenting: Daria, the daughter of the two

So how old are you, Dasha? This many! (To an English-speaking foreigner – Daria speaks French and Russian)

With Daddy Vadimir. We watched Dasha puzzle over the fact that her father had not
won his game, so had he lost? She is still struggling to understand "draw".

At dinner with the Skvortsovs: Oksana Lobinsh, wife of Oleg's
college mate Edvins, sharing iPhone pictures with Natalia

Frederic recorded some of the musical performances, which we will bring you in the next few days...

Schedule

With the blitz finished the pairings are as follows in the classical portion of the tournament, which starts tomorrow:

The Rapid portion will be on February 19th.

Schedule of Commentary

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN All Blitz 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.