Anand wins Corsican Masters Knockout

by ChessBase
11/1/2011 – The fourteen top players from the Corsican Open were joined by two seeded world-class grandmaster for the Masters Knockout. The latter showed why they sit on the top of international rating lists by going through to the final. There World Champion Vishy Anand outplayed Azeri Super-GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov with a clean 2-0 result. Annotations by GM Elshan Moradiabadi.

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The 15th edition of the Corsican Circuit was staged on an island that breaks the world record per capita chess players (5375 active members in a population of 300,000). In a difficult economic environment the organisers managed to maintain the same level of prizes (95,000 €), having mobilised a total of 124 sponsors! Hundreds of young people participated in the festive event, which this year welcomed over 800 friends from the five continents.

The Open tournament consisted of nine rounds and finished with the following top results:

Pl Ti Player
Rtng
Fed
Pts
Tr.
Bu.
Perf
1 g Sasikiran Krishnan
2689
IND
7.5
44.5
55.5
2792
2 g Jones Gawain C B
2624
ENG
7.0
45
56.5
2692
3 g Melkumyan Hrant
2619
ARM
6.5
46.5
57.5
2647
4 g Fressinet Laurent
2696
FRA
6.5
45.5
55.5
2664
5 g Durarbeyli Vasif
2526
AZE
6.5
45
54
2542
6 g Baron Tal
2505
ISR
6.5
44.5
54.5
2559
7 g Cheparinov Ivan
2650
BUL
6.5
44
54.5
2597
8 m Arnold Marc T
2505
USA
6.5
44
54
2629
9 m Battaglini Gabriel
2452
FRA
6.5
43
53
2455
10 g Grigoryan Avetik
2614
ARM
6.5
43
52.5
2588
11 g Mamedov Rauf
2660
AZE
6.5
42.5
53
2599
12 m Mullon Jean-Baptiste
2379
FRA
6.5
42.5
51.5
2464
13 g Tregubov Pavel V.
2602
RUS
6.5
41.5
51
2554
14 f Massoni Michael
2304
FRA
6.5
40.5
49.5
2387
15 f Berthelot Yannick
2286
FRA
6.5
39.5
49
2421
16   Baghdasaryan Vahe
2362
ARM
6
42.5
52.5
2427
17   Inants Aghasi
2288
ARM
6
42.5
50.5
2360
18 m Bedouin Xavier
2406
FRA
6
41.5
50.5
2344
19 g Flear Glenn C
2471
ENG
6
41
51
2435
20 g Sulava Nenad
2540
CRO
6
41
51
2394
21 f Coleman Teddy
2312
USA
6
41
49
2366
22 m Debray Christopher
2402
FRA
6
40.5
50.5
2354
23   Ivanov Stojan Emilov
2221
BUL
6
40.5
47.5
2339
24 m Dimitrov Radoslav
2424
BUL
6
39.5
49
2343
25 gf Mamedjarova Turkan
2277
AZE
6
39
47.5
2310
26   Egozi Nadav
2173
ISR
6
38
47.5
2225
27   Humeau Cyril
2261
FRA
6
36.5
44.5
2165

Now came the final phase: the top fourteen players were joined by two seeded world class grandmasters for a sixteen-player knockout competition, with two games per match, played at a rate of fifteen minutes for all moves plus three seconds increment per move from the start. Turned out that the "two seeded world class grandmasters" were in a league of their own, since both went through to the final, which was played on Monday. Here is a table with the pairings and results:

Corsica Masters Knockout

The great success of Corsica Circuit apparently caught the organisers unprepared: the official web site (given in the link below) crashed and there was no information available. Luckily we had been following the games on Playchess, and the super-reliable Mark Crowther of TWIC soon had them up as well. And one of the Playchess visitors provided us with light commentary: GM Elshan Moradiabadi of Iran (picture right) submitted them a few hours after the games had finished.

As soon as we receive visuals from Corsica we will add them to this page, but until then we give you Elshan's thoughts on the final for your enjoyment and as a special treat. We have also tagged on an endgame lesson sent in by GM Karsten Müller, which examines a missed opportunity from an earlier round.

 


Winner of the Corsica Masters Knockout: World Champion Viswanathan Anand

Dominance Duel

In addition to the GM commentary of Elshan Moradiabadi we bring you analysis by our resident GM Karsten Müller, who looks at a critical game from the first round. French GM Laurent Fressinet had contrived to lose his first game, with the white pieces, against his compatriot IM Gabriel Battaglini, rated 244 points lower than him on the rating scale. In their second game Fressinet had a chance to equalise (and force tiebreak games) in an endgame that saw the fight of bishop against knight zugzwang, where dominance often plays a crucial role:

Links

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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