Grand Chess Tour - Leuven: Wesley So increases lead

The Leuven tournament of the Grand Chess Tour is running from June 28 to July 2 in Leuven, Belgium. It is a combination of Rapid and Blitz games. The ten participants are Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Viswanathan Anand, Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Vassily Ivanchuk, and Baadur Jobava. They will play nine rapid games, three a day, from June 28–30. Each day the games will start at 14:00h, 15:30h and 17:00h European Standard Summer Time. The Blitz tournament is on July 1-2, with nine rounds on each day, starting at 14:00h. The total prize fund is $150,000!

Note that the event is using the Bronstein mode: the players have 25 minutes for all the moves of a rapid game, and a ten second delay per move. This means that the clock does not run for ten seconds – the point is that you cannot accumulate time by playing very quickly in the Bronstein Mode.

Day two

All photos by Lennart Ootes

Great art speaks to us

Round four

Round 4 saw two interesting draws in Vladimir Kramnik-Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave against Magnus Carlsen, the latter with Maxime pressing. The other three games were decisive, bringing the total share of wins to a whopping 70%!

A fascinating draw, though the Frenchman was the one pressing against the World Champion

Wesley So won again. Baadur Jobava even had an extra pawn in the endgame, but a series of awkward knight checks left him out of position to defend the key f7-pawn.

Levon Aronian and Viswanathan Anand have some interesting personal history. Back in 2008-09 when Vishy was World Champion, Levon was his nemesis, at some stretch winning six unanswered games (five of them with Black!) with some draws in-between. Later things leveled out, but Aronian still holds a small edge.

Levon Aronian - Vishy Anand

With six decisive games out of six, and 50%, the tournament has certainly had its ups and downs for Levon Aronian

Vassily Ivanchuk didn't get anything out of the opening against Anish Giri, then walked his queen into a trap. This was the second win in a row for Giri, who was able to erase the memory of his loss to Nepo and get to a plus one score.

Vassily Ivanchuk - Anish Giri

Round five

The top billing for round five was Carlsen-Kramnik. Sitting at a 50% score, three points behind Wesley, Magnus needed to get back to his winning ways.

Magnus Carlsen's lopsided score against Vladimir Kramnik certainly makes him Vlad's great nemesis

Magnus Carlsen - Vladimir Kramnik

Levon Aronian keeps on alternating wins and losses. This time he couldn't hold under the pressure from Ian Nepo.

Ian Nepomniachtchi - Levon Aronian

Anand easily defeated Ivanchuk, who for some reason chose a terribly passive Benoni setup and went down without making one active move in the whole game.

Vachier-Lagrave won a long endgame against the hapless Jobava. Maybe it's Baadur's style of play that doesn't hold well against the world’s best players, or some other factors that I don't know about, but one way or another, Jobava looks out of his league here.

Round six

It didn't help Baadur's case that he had black against Carlsen in his next game. Black could have safely resigned on move 17. Magnus won his second in a row and caught up with MVL, who managed to survive with white against Giri.

Wesley So responded accordingly. He didn't change his style of play after the debacle in Paris, still we see solid openings and a lot of endgames, but in Leuven Wesley is getting results!

Wesley So - Vishy Anand

Too early to tell, but it seems the veterans, Anand, Kramnik and Ivanchuk, are finding it harder and harder to compete in faster time controls. They're still dangerous in individual games, as Ian found out in round three against Anand, and again in round six.

Vassily Ivanchuk - Ian Nepomniachtchi

Don't be fooled by Ivanchuk's look of quiet disinterest. At the board, he is as dangerous as they come.

Nepo is learning the hard way not to underestimate the old lions.

We have familiar faces at the top of the standings after six rounds of Rapid, and, most likely, this is the way it is going to stand throughout the rest of the event.

This makes me wonder about the selection process for the wild cards. Nobody questioned the appearance of Grischuk and Mamedyarov in Paris, and of course the nod to the veterans, Ivanchuk and Topalov, was the right thing to do. Kramnik made a decision for himself when he chose to participate in individual events rather than be a regular Tour participant. Giri barely missed the cut for the Tour, but he's been an everyday player in elite events for a long time already.

What about the others? Bacrot didn't live up to expectations in Paris, but was an understandable choice as the number two rated French player, and now Jobava has yet to score any points in his campaign.

Who will get the wild cards in the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz? Is the cupboard empty? And, more importantly, where are the Chinese guys? With four players in the top 25, all young, it is odd for not one of the Chinese players to make an appearance in any of the Grand Chess Tour events.

Rapid crosstable after six rounds*

(Click for full size)

*Note: All rapid games are worth double

Links

• Official tournament site
• All Rapid 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.