FIDE Grand Prix - Geneva: Teimour Radjabov regains sole lead

The Grand Prix is being organized by Agon Limited, the commercial partner of the World Chess Federation, the game’s governing body. Agon has the exclusive commercial rights to organize the cycle of the World Championship.

Each Grand Prix has a prize fund of 130,000 euros, and the Geneva Grand Prix is supported by EG Capital Advisors, Kaspersky Lab and S.T. Dupont.

Twenty-four of the world’s best players are competing in the Grand Prix, with 18 of them participating in each of the tournaments. They will play a nine round swiss open played at 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move one.

The tournament runs from June 6-15, with a rest day on June 11 after round five. Each round starts at 2 pm local time (8 am New York time).

Round seven

Photos by Valera Belobeev for World Chess

Some friendly banter between Anish Giri, Erwin L'Ami and Peter Svidler

The first of the big games of the day was between two of the joint leaders, Pentala Harikrishna and Alexander Grischuk. The game’s opening was dominated by Grischuk’s innovative play and when Harikrishna failed to find the best follow-up it was Black who began to dictate the terms. Both players agreed that Black was better, but there was some doubts as to whether the draw was a bit premature by Black, and whether he might not press to try for more. This is a question he may find himself asking more over the next day or two should he fail to catch Radjabov, who did not miss his chance.

Despite getting a good position from the game, he seemed very unsure of the final situation

If Grischuk seemed to lack that killer instinct to make the most of his chances in round seven, Teimour Radjabov had no such reservations. The standings being what they were, his initial goal was conservative, just wanting to get a position that was alive and playable, so that he might try to leverage it into more. He got his wish, and the superb win over Peter Svidler is analyzed in detail below by GM Lenderman.

Teimor Radjabov analyses what he saw from his game

Teimour Radjabov - Peter Svidler (annotated by GM Aleksandr Lenderman)

A huge win for Teimour Radjabov (left) as he retakes sole lead with 5.0/7 and two rounds to go

With this win, Radjabov is now in sole lead once again, and things suddenly become very interesting in the Grand Prix standings. Consider that he scored 71 points in the first event, While Ding Liren scored 70 in his first event. That one little point might have a powerful impact on things should Teimour go on to take sole first. If he does, he will actually be one point ahead of the Chinese player with 241 over Ding Liren’s 240. They both play in Palma de Mallorca later this year, so whatever the result, whether Ding Liren is ahead or Radjabov, both will have their chances to decide their fate in that final event of the Grand Prix. Of course this analysis is all based on the current standings, but with two rounds to go, anything can happen still.

Boris Gelfand and Hou Yifan analyze their draw after signing their scoresheets

Among the interesting games of the day was Pavel Eljanov once again, who found himself in his sixth decisive game of the event, this time on the winning side. He played Saleh Salem with White, and faced a Modern Benoni on the board. Black was never quite able to resolve his opening problems, and was one tempo behind, but an explosive one. Just as he got his dream …b5 advance going, he met with a catastrophic counter in the center. See below, and don’t forget you can move the pieces directly on the diagram.

Pavel Eljanov - Saleh Salem

Pavel Eljanov has generally been known as a solid player. With events like this, with only one draw, he is going to wreck that reputation for good. Not that the spectators are complaining!

Things are certainly heating up and the last two rounds will be cataclysmic. Don’t miss out on the action, and remember you can follow the games live in the Live Games section.

Standings after seven rounds

Modern Benoni for Advanced Players

The Modern Benoni is perhaps the most dynamic approach to meeting 1.d4 without sacrificing a pawn. A lot of legendary players have had a sincere love affair with this opening. The most imaginative world champion of all time, Michail Tal is perhaps the player who has done most to popularise the opening. In this DVD International Master Ari Ziegler is giving you a fighting repertoire against all White systems in the Modern Benoni.

Links

• Official tournament site
• All games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.