Baku 07: He is human!

The first stage of the 2014-2015 FIDE Grand Prix is taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan. The tournament will run from October 1st to October 15, 2014. Some of the strongest players in the world will compete in a Round Robin event. The winner and runner-up of the Grand Prix series will earn their spot at the 2016 Candidate's Tournament.

Round Seven

Gelfand, Boris ½-½ Kasimdzhanov, Rustam
Gelfand always had an edge in this game, and that led to a dangerous rook endgame for Kasimdzhanov. It is possible that Gelfand was winning with the shot 51.f6+!, but Karsten Müller will have to give the final say on this one!

Karlovich, Kasimdzhanov and Gelfand in the post-mortem

Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar ½-½ Tomashevsky, Evgeny
White's opening experiment left him with a good position. Black didn't have too much compensation for the pair of bishops. At a certain point White transformed his advantage into a strong phalanx of pawns in the center, but they were quickly targeted by Black's pieces. Tomashevsky's activity was enough and Mamedyarov decided to allow a repetition.

Andreikin, Dmitry 1-0 Caruana, Fabiano
This game was very far from perfect. Caruana's reign of terror comes to an end in a series of mistakes. The Italian player worded it best: "More or less all my moves were bad from the first to the last one. So that's what went wrong. I made so many mistakes and missed so many things. I think I had a decent position after the opening and I just slowly ruined it."

Andreikin obtained a pawn and converted it without problems in a long endgame, though he was definitely not better out of the opening in a Scandinavian.

One loss was enough to bring Caruana back to even on rating from this tournament

Andreikin does not have a good tournament but everyone is very dangerous at this level, you just never know when they will leap at an opportunity.

Nakamura, Hikaru 0-1 Karjakin, Sergey
Nakamura's opening experiment was a spectacular failure. With White his position was hard to play after move five, and after 12 moves he was already fighting to keep material equality. Karjakin eventually won a pawn and simplified into a double rook endgame that was incredibly unpleasant for White. The Russian's technique was good and it was sufficient for the full point.

Radjabov, Teimour ½-½ Dominguez, Leinier
A very strange game. It seemed as if at any moment one of the players would launch an all-in attack, but somehow for many moves the attacks were stalled as they decided to improve their position more and more. Eventually White's passed d-pawn cost Black material, so he decided to give a relatively spectacular perpetual to finish the game.

Neither player risked everything for their attack

Svidler, Peter ½-½ Grischuk, Alexander
This very short game seemed pretty exciting. Black's structural advantage was compensated by the pair of bishops and some initiative. Svidler sacrificed to expose Black's king and the game ended in a perpetual as there was no more.

Grischuk is tied for last, not a position he finds himself commonly

Round Seven Games

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Standings

Schedule

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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.