While exciting pairings in and of themselves, for both Anish Giri and Baadur Jobava it was a welcome warmup before playing in the Grand Prix event in Tashkent a couple of days later. In fact, Anish Giri commented that he really commiserated with Jobava, since while he had known he would play and had ample time to prepare, Jobava learned of his participation at the last minute, giving him no time to ready himself for such elite competition.

Baadur Jobava vs Jan Timman

On paper, the match between the two was not only the most lopsided, but potentially the least attractive if one were to only stare at numbers and ratings. For the aficionados however, nothing could be further from the truth.

It is true that the great veteran Jan Timman is nowhere near his former peak when he was
a regular fixture in the top five, but the optimistic player has never lacked ambition at the board,
and one could count on him to make a fight of it.

Baadur Jobava is one of the true talents in chess, and his highly imaginative chess can
be a handful for anyone and he beat Magnus Carlsen even, when he was already world no.1

The playing hall was both simple and elegant

Here is an example of Jobava's dynamic play:

Jan Timman reviews the game with Loek Van Wely after

The games were made visible to spectators via classic display boards, meaning also a manual handler

Final standings

Anish Giri vs Alexey Shirov

This is already the second match by Shirov in the last month, having won the previous one in rapid games over Evgeny Sveshnikov. In the past year, Anish Giri has been climbing the Elo ladder quite steadily and is now at an impressive world no.7.

Despite being a favorite, Giri had a minus score against Shirov prior
to the match, having lost to him precisely at Hoogoven in 2010

Alexei Shirov has never deviated from his no-holds-barred brand
of chess, which is what makes him so popular to this day. There
is no such thing as a dull Shirov game.

Nevertheless, Anish Giri's preparation was second to none, and it showed in the match

Here is a spectacular win by Anish in game six:

Try as he might, Shirov had no answers in the match

The spectators were treated to great fun

The world seen through chess

Final standings

The classy matches rewarded the winners with these beautiful glass trophies

Despite giving Timman a route, Jobava showed his appreciation at playing such a great player

Anish will be arriving in Tashkent full of confidence after his 4.5-1.5 victory. His live rating
is also at a lofty 2776.

Photos by Peter Doggers

Links Official tournament site All Jobava-Timman games in PGN All Giri-Shirov games in PGN You can also use ChessBase 12 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.