Gibraltar Rd06: Nigel cuts Fabiano Short

Photos by John Saunders and Sophie Triay

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2017

The Tradewise Gibraltar Open is one of the strongest and best organised events of its kind in the world. Anyone who knows the moves (and pays the entry fee) can take part, and perhaps face top participants like Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave or Hikaru Nakamura. The tournament lasts from January 23 (opening) to February 4. The location is very balmy: ten hours of daylight, average day temperature 16° C, warm sea temperatures, beautiful scenery. Paradise!

Gibraltar Rd06: Nigel cuts Fabiano Short

Round six of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters proved remarkably bloodthirsty as the top seven boards (and fifteen of the top twenty boards) ended in decisive results. Three leaders emerged victorious from the smoking carnage to stand together on 5½/6: Hikaru Nakamura, still on course for a third successive title, English number one Mickey Adams, and Spain's 21-year-old star David Anton Guijarro.

Among the victims were the early leaders Emil Sutovsky and Ju Wenjun. “Both of these players, Wenjun and Sutovsky, took a quick draw yesterday. And the Goddess of Chess, Caissa, punished them for their crime against the game”, remarked Nigel Short after the round.

Maxime Lagarde of France seemed to have good chances of holding against Nakamura until about move 28 when 28...c4 would have been an improvement but, slightly short of time, he allowed this important pawn to drop off and resigned when his a-pawn was similarly doomed. 

Michael Adams takes on Ju Wenjun

After playing and defeating the women's world champion the previous round Mickey Adams found himself up against the women's world number two Ju Wenjun today. I believe I proffered some advice about not taking Ju Wenjun's e-pawn in an earlier report. In fact, Mickey did do this but only after the e-pawn had captured and become a d5-pawn. I'm not sure whether that counts. Anyway, Mickey was already well on course for victory by the time this occurred and he later expressed relief that he finally managed a shorter game than his previous marathon encounters. Ju Wenjun's 10...b5 move looked risky and once Mickey had established his a-pawn on the sixth rank her position was very uncomfortable.

Adams speaks about his victory

David Anton Guijarro caught the eye with a stellar performance at last year's Tradewise Gibraltar Masters, losing only in the final round when a reversal of this result would have put him into a tie for first place.

Still aged only 21, he seems destined to join the world's elite. This year he has been equally impressive, with three successive wins in rounds four to six against US prodigy Awonder Liang, chess legend Boris Gelfand and now Emil Sutovsky, with the black pieces. David has a quiet but assured spoken manner, rather after the manner of Mickey Adams, and his methodical dismantling of Sutovsky's overstretched pawn structure owed something to the great English player.

Guijarro on his splendid form

SENIOR CITIZEN MUGS WORLD NUMBER TWO SHOCK HORROR

The day's big story was Nigel Short's defeat of world number two Fabiano Caruana.

It's no secret that Nigel enjoys playing in Gibraltar, where he has won the title three times, but he also enjoys the social life, captaining the men's team in the Battle of the Sexes match on the Saturday night before this game, and also participating in the Teams of Four blitz event a few evenings ago. He was particularly annoyed with himself at the latter event where he was paired with Fabiano Caruana in the first round and seemingly had the world number two on toast before letting his advantage slip to lose the game. Nigel had been cross with himself because he had already put away a bottle of red wine by the time he had sat down at the board, bemoaning the fact that nobody had joined him at his dinner table to help him soak up the vino.

With hindsight, trying to beat @FabianoCaruana at blitz after drinking a bottle of wine was perhaps not the best idea @GibraltarChess

— Nigel Short (@nigelshortchess) January 27, 2017

I guess that must have motivated him for their classical chess encounter in round six, providing him with the chance of instant revenge. This time, if the great US player will forgive me for saying so, it looked rather as if it was Faby who had been hitting the bottle (though, before his lawyers hit me with a defamation suit, I should point out that he had done no such thing). But his play in the Caro-Kann looked well below par, going slightly astray as early as the eighth move.

Note that Nigel didn't wheel out his eponymous variation against the Caro, it not being obligatory for players who have variations named after them to play them on every occasion, but steered it into something more pugnacious. This decision paid off handsomely. On move 17 Nigel went a pawn up, for which Fabiano had precious little compensation. But he didn't get to where he is on the rating list without knowing how to wriggle effectively and it was only after a long and arduous technical phase that Nigel could realize his material advantage to win.

Before the game ended someone in the commentary room had looked through statistics to discover that Nigel hadn't beaten anyone rated in excess of 2800 in a classical game since his 1993 title match against Garry Kasparov. Quizzed on this later he himself commented that he was less impressed by the rating of his opponent than by his relative status as world number two. Then, even as he was discussing this, and with immaculate comic timing, a tweet flashed up on the commentary room screen, from Nigel's title match rival from a quarter of a century ago...

A shame for Caruana, but I have to be happy for my fellow senior citizen, @nigelshortchess! #GibChess https://t.co/MsbJIIGGRD

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) January 29, 2017

... which reduced all of us present in the commentary room, including Nigel, to fits of laughter. 

 
The moment when Nigel and Jovanka saw Garry Kasparov's tweet on the screen

Incidentally, it is good to know that Garry Kasparov is following progress here in Gibraltar. He may have retired as a player but he still watches major chess events. Our social media manager cheekily suggested on the Twitter feed that he might like to turn up next year to see if he is still good enough to beat Nigel. As Jim Slater memorably said to Bobby Fischer, "come out and fight, chicken".

Nigel described himself as "ecstatic" at beating one of the world's best players. It was a nice touch that Garry Kasparov also spared a thought for his beaten opponent, for whom this was a triple whammy – loss of game, demotion to number three in the world ranking behind Carlsen and Wesley So, and consequently demotion to number two amongst the US players.

Fabiano accepted defeat with his customary good grace and sportsmanship.

Hope of first place is not quite extinct for him, given his unmatched record for spectacular streaks. Incidentally, we think he had gone something like 50 games without defeat before his game with Nigel but don't take our word for that. He'll be hurting today but he will bounce back.

Unlucky Chucky: Ivanchuk spoilt his game against Valentin Dragnev in time trouble

One leading player who is probably now out of the running on 3½/6 is Vasyl Ivanchuk, who lost to a 17-year-old Austrian IM, Valentin Dragnev. The Ukrainian looked to be winning but again the clock was his downfall. With only 40 seconds or so left he made a disastrous 34.Ree7 move which left his position in ruins. Thereafter the young Austrian exploited his opportunity very effectively.

Long Story Short with Hikaru Nakamura

Top pairings and results of Round 6

Top rankings after Round 6

Rankings of all 150 players after six rounds

Pairings/Results Round 7 on 2017/01/30 at 15.00

Get the complete results and pairings: Masters + Challengers A + Amateur A

Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the 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 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.