FIDE Grand Prix - Geneva: Tense round leads to showdown

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 eight

Photos by Valera Belobeev for World Chess

With Teimour Radjabov taking no risks, understandably, against Alexander Raizantsev, the 22 move draw came as no surprise. The real question lay in the game of the players right behind him who had but two rounds to try to catch up with him, or even surpass him. The first and foremost game was that between Alexander Grischuk and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Neither player would be really satisfied with a draw and the battle that ensued was both thrilling and to a high standard. Grischuk came out of the opening much better, overall showing how well-prepared he came to the event with so many excellent ideas, and he built a tremendous advantage if just short of winning. The Azeri player struck back in a moment of inattention by White, and he sacrificed the exchange brilliantly, obtaining a surprising amount of compensation as acknowledged by Grischuk in the post-game interview. It was not quite enough to turn the tables around, though it did re-establish the balance, and after 59 moves they shook hands.

Alexander Grischuk analyses what he saw in his game

Alexander Grischuk - Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (annotated by GM Aleksandr Lenderman)

It was the one result niether player wanted

The other big game of the round was that between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Levon Aronian. One can only congratulate Nepo on his stamina, since not only has he been playing non-stop for over a month now, but also at a very high standard, and the result is that he is just over 2751 Elo and in the top 15 players. The game against Levon was not a smooth one to be fair, and the Armenian player came with serious ambitions as could be seen by the line he chose and the follow-up. It was a position that an engine might give a digital yawn, but a human player would certainly be trepidatious about. Eventually time trouble reared its ugly head, and he missed a beautiful continuation that might have changed everything.

Ian Nepomniachtchi looks uncomfortably at 18...Be3!

Ian Nepomniachtchi - Levon Aronian

Ian Nepomniachtchi shares the tale of the game with WGM Anna Burtasova

The final round will be decisive in many ways, and expect exciting fights to the end. Ian Nepomniachtchi will have white against Teimour Radjabov and will likely try hard to wrest the full point from the Azeri to take sole first.

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 eight rounds

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.