Gibraltar 08: Hurricane Ivanchuk is back

The traditional Gibraltar Chess Congress has begun! The 12th edition of this event is under way, but the main attraction - the Masters Section, will begin tomorrow. The Masters section entries are closed and the pairings are ready for the tournament to begin.

Round Eight

Ivanchuk clear first, yet again

Vassily Ivanchuk pulled ahead of the field for the second time when he defeated Surya Ganguly of India in the eighth round of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters, played at the Caleta Hotel on Tuesday 4 February. He now has 7/8 and the field has become slightly stretched behind him, as Gata Kamsky and Richard Rapport also won to share second place on 6½. Behind them sharing fourth place are no fewer than 18 players on 6, including top seeds Michael Adams and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who have to hope the leaders falter so they can fight for the first prize of £20,000. Amongst the players on 6 are two women players, Lela Javakhishvili of Georgia and Zhao Xue of China, who are the current frontrunners for the women's first prize of £15,000. The game between the overnight round seven leaders was a smooth display of technique from the genial Ukrainian. Playing a Semi-Tarrasch with Black, Ganguly never really seemed to get going and was gradually bullied into submission without making any obvious error.

Rodshtein versus Adams was a very tough game, with the young Israeli giving the number one seed quite a stern test. Though he was a pawn down in the final phase of the game, the commentators half-expected him to prevail with his several strong positional threats. However, Adams is a resourceful defender and he did enough to hold for a draw.

Li Chao versus Maxime Vachier-Lagrave wasn't a bad game either but soon fizzled out to a drawn rook and pawn endgame. On the next boards the two Russians Vitiugov and Dreev had a Slav opening 'discussion' before it too petered out to a draw.

Li Chao vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

David Pardo Simón did well to beat Daniil Dubov in round seven but was thrown to the lions in round eight when he was paired with Gata Kamsky. Like Ivanchuk, the old pro is getting close to the finishing line and can almost smell the £20,000 winner's cheque. Consequently, he is liable to be very carnivorous when paired with someone rated 2450. This game was one-way traffic but it is instructive to see how he went about winning with Black.

Kamsky trying to get back into the fight

Eric Hansen, playing Black against Pentala Harikrishna, was a pawn up with the better game for quite a while, but the resourceful Indian managed to win the pawn back and draw the endgame.

Hansen had good chances today against Harikrishna

Vitiugov and Dreev are two Russian powerhouses, but they could not best each other

The pairing of Richard Rapport and Wei Yi was a mouth-watering one as both have caused a lot of excitement in the chess world in the last year or so. The game was actually quite a sedate one in many ways but the deeper they progressed into an endgame, the more Rapport's extra experience told.

There was a surprise in an all-Spanish match-up between Paco Vallejo Pons and David Anton Guijarro, who were both on 5/7 at the start of the round. This might have been partially ascribable to the top Spanish GM's misfortune earlier in the day in having his car clamped in Gibraltar. Hopefully this will not lead to an international incident. But it definitely wasn't a good day for the genial Spanish número uno.

The two leaders in the race for the women's first prize owed their victories in this round to their tactical acumen. Firstly, Zhao Xue, who started slowly but has now won her last four games, found a tricky tactic to defeat Ralf Akesson of Sweden.

Lela Javakhishvili's combination against Krikor Sevag Mekhitarian was even more devilish.

There were one or two other commendable efforts from women competitors:

Hoang Thanh Trang (right) defeated 2733-rated fifth seed
Pavel Eljanov and left him languishing on 4½/8

Mariya Muzychuk beat Emil Sutovsky.
Such is the lure of the £15,000 first women's prize.

All Photos and report by John Saunders from the Press Release

Links Official tournament site The games will be 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.