Kortchnoi Zurich Blitz: A day of Sacrifices

Photos by Frederic Friedel

It has long been a tradition in many human races to begin an important event with a sacrifice. On the first day in Zurich, there was no shortage of this. There were sacrifices in almost every round in the opening blitz, in some cases one’s own pieces, and in some cases, the opponent's.

It all began with Vishy’s exhibition match against the main sponsor of the Zurich Chess Challenge, Mr Oleg Skvortsov. Vishy exhibited a masterpiece against Skvortsov, who in his active playing days was known to be a great attacker in his chess circle.

Blitz

The seven round blitz tournament turned out to be a race between Hikaru Nakamura and Boris Gelfand who was playing zestfully, more like his younger self. Boris, in fact, had been leading the tournament until the final round.

Gelfand started his campaign with the following entertaining game where he delivers a Greek Gift, only to see Yanick Pelletier do a king walk, like Forrest Gump, that should have ended up mating Boris!

But the former World Championship Finalist survived:

Nepomniachtchi scored 50% and Svidler was at the bottom of the table with 2.5/7.

It all boiled down to who blundered less in this time control with 4 minutes+2 seconds increment. Svidler and Pelletier were guilty of many such errors and hence, they finished last.

Anand was also stranded on 50% despite winning against his one-time nemesis Vladimir Kramnik. And this was mostly due to games such as these...

Grigoriy Oparin was also solid for the most part, but started blundering in time trouble towards the end. In most of the games, the Russian had a time deficit, which probably explains why despite playing fine, he could only notch up 3.0/7.

Gelfand played very interesting chess overall, including a brave, but completely wrong, sacrifice against Pelletier that we discussed in the beginning. He also played two technically correct games against Vishy and Oparin. Interestingly, Boris is playing as a last-minute replacement for Maxime-Vachier Lagrave who had to withdraw due to personal reasons.

Nakamura was stable and played decent chess throughout. There was not anything extraordinary in his games, but he played good and fast moves without major blunders, which is remarkable with just 4 minutes for each game.

Of course, that included creative positions such as this one.

While Gelfand had been leading after six rounds, he lost his final round game to Nepomniachtchi, and Nakamura held Anand to a draw. Both the American and the Israeli were tied at 4.5/7, but Naka took the title on the tiebreak (Sonneborn-Berger). However, if you look at the head to head encounter between them, it was Hikaru who had come out on top.

Standings 

Note: The Opening Blitz has, however, no effect on the final rankings; it was held only to determine the pairings for the main tournament.

Impressions from the Opening Ceremony

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhiov was present at the Opening. The recent special board meeting essentially makes Kirsan chess' Zaphod Beeblebrox from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, whose Wiki describes him as: 'He was briefly the President of the Galaxy (a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge, a role for which Zaphod was perfectly suited).'

Ilya Gringolts, one of the most inspirational violinists today, Boris Adrianov, a multiple international prize winner for his amazing cellist talents, Dmitry Illarionov, probably the most talented guitarists of modern Russia, and Leonard Schreiber, a Belgian violinist with a reputation of being a preeminent soloist, who has had the honour to play for several Heads of States and Royalties even in private concerts.

Nepo, Svidler with the guest of honour, Anatoly the 12th, and the chief sponsor Oleg Skvortsov and his better half.

Karpov discussing chess affairs with Frederic Friedel and Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam of New in Chess.

Anna Burtasova was taping the action with professional equipment and will provide us with embeds.

Enjoy her work from the opening day. If you click on the Event Posts icon on the far right, you can replay the video from the first day.

Anna is a WGM (2009) from Russia who has a nice list of achievements, including under-14 Russian vice champion and under-16 champion, as well as a winner of tournaments like Mondariz, Kharkov and Jakarta. But she has devoted most of her 30 years to chess journalism. She graduated as a lawyer from Vladimir State University, moved to Moscow and worked as an editor and reporter for the Russian Chess Federation website. Later she joined the FIDE Cess in Schools Commission as General Coordinator. Her articles have been published in chess magazines like "64 Chess review", "New in Chess", "Schachmagazin 64", "Schach", etc. and of course she did a few articles for ChessBase. In May 2013 Anna joined ChessTV team as an editor and reporter.

Games

2017 Kortchnoi Zurich Chess Challenge

Video of Opening Ceremony and Blitz

Schedule

According the rules of the Zurich Chess Challenge 2017 the winner of a classical game is awarded two points for the overall standings. A draw gives each player one point, and the loser gets zero points. In the final Blitz tournament on Monday, 17 April, the winner is given one point, a draw gest agetsyer half a point, and the loser gets zero points.

• All ChessBase reports from Zurich 2016
• All ChessBase reports from past Zurich tournaments