Corus 01: Judit Polgar, Topalov win first round games

Corus Chess Tournament Wijk aan Zee 14 – 30 January 2005 Official web site – Live coverage – ChessBase reports

Round one: Judit Polgar, Veselin Topalov win

Judit Polgar returned to the tournament scene with a crashing victory against Peter Svidler, fearlessly taking up the challenge to play against the Marshall Gambit and winning when her opponent committed a Bxa2 blunder on move 26. For this effort Judit was rewarded with the 250 Euro public prize.

Anand and Kramnik used the opening round to score pragmatic draws with the black pieces against Grischuk and Bruzon. Anand in fact replayed, move for move, a rapid game he had played last summer against Shirov in Mainz. The world's number two required only five minutes of his clock time to execute all his moves.

Peter Leko fought hard for a full point against Ivan Sokolov, but the N+2P vs N+P ending could not be transformed into a win.

Peter Leko and Ivan Sokolov in the postmortem after their game

The 'Brits', Nigel Short and Michael Adams played a 23-move gentleman-like draw with just one pawn each coming off the board. "We chickened out," said Nigel at the end of their Ruy Lopez Chigorin encounter.

Morozevich vs van Wely was tense and hard-fought, but ended in a draw, while Veselin Topalov proved his class with a fine 64-move victory over ex world champion Ruslan Ponomariov.

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Young Ukrainian star Sergey Karjakin in winning form

In Group B 15-year-old Sergey Karjakin was the first to win, in 34 moves against a French Defence by Sipke Ernst. Daniel Stellwagen, 17, followed suit on the black side of a Modern Benoni, where he simply outplayed top seed Predrag Nikolic.

20-year-old GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan came out the winner on the black side of a Sicilian Najdorf against Dutch GM Friso Nijboer. It was a seesaw game. At move 26 Mamedyarov, who had been worse for some time, missed a clear draw (26...Nxb2!), after which Friso Nijboer repayed the favour with a terrible blunder (29.Qf4) and was mated on move 35 (he resigned one move earlier).

Women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova (above) got into a lot of trouble in her Slav Defence game against the very strong Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen. But incredibly she survived a double rook endgame two pawns down to draw in 64 moves.

"Did I make a mistake?" Peter Heine Nielsen ponders the position after 44.Bd3. With his previous move, 43.Rb6 he relinquished his winning chances.

The longest game of the day was played by Alexandra Kosteniuk, whose glamour and modelling activities sometimes make us forget what a strong player and tough fighter she is. Alexandra was women's vice champion of the world, recently won the European Women's Championship and is the tenth female in chess history to gain a male GM title.

In her game against top US grandmaster Alexander Onischuk Alexandra was clearly winning at move 69 when an inaccuracy – 70.g6 instead of 70.Rf7?? – spoilt the position to a draw. At move 75 a theoretically drawn endgame of rook and bishop vs rook was on the board, and a lesser spirit might have offered a dejected draw. But this lady simply fought on and after pressing for 36 more moves she had generated a position where her opponent had to find an only move (111.Rb3). Onischuk didn't and in four more moves the game was over – with a victory for Kosteniuk.

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  Group A – Group B – Group C

Report by Frederic Friedel, pictures by Jeroen van den Belt

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