Kortchnoi Zurich Challenge: No heroes in time trouble

Photos by Frederic Friedel

Round 2

Svidler-Gelfand followed on the heels of the 2016 games of Matlakov-Dominguez, and Kovalenko-Salgado Lopez. Peter didn’t show anything great and the game petered away to a draw pretty quickly and was the first to end.

Yannick Pelletier got a decent, complicated position out of opening against Viswanathan Anand, but it seemed to me that Yannick was too passive in the game.

Vishy was on to him like a Tiger catching a deer. You can see Anand showing his claws to the Swiss before the game even began. Yannick should have picked up the clues...

Hikaru Nakamura played an excellent game against Grigoriy Oparin and outplayed him comprehensively. Grigoriy tried to keep up and fought toe to toe, but at critical moments, Hikaru just proved to be a notch higher.

Vladimir Kramnik was, again, sheer class as he was flawless for the most part of the game and ended up a piece up.

However, Nepomniachtchi kept persisting without resigning, and Vlad, playing with 30 seconds increment for a long time, underestimated the dangers of his opponent’s a-passer and ended up frittering away half a point. Welcome to the New Classical time control, Vlad!

Kramnik searching for his win.

Round 3

Pelletier-Oparin was a solid affair. The game looked pretty equal throughout with little chances for either side. And thus, Yannick got off the mark (with a draw).

Nepo-Vishy’s opening was very similar to Svidler-Gelfand earlier in the day, but Vishy definitely kept things interesting. He achieved equality, but unlike the earlier game, the middlegame was by no means lifeless. However, White’s position was practically easier to play and Nepo made use of his resources to set Vishy problems. Vishy proved fully up to it till the 36^th move, when he was down to 5 minutes. Even at the cost of sounding cliché, I’ve to repeat this in Zurich often, ‘There are no heroes in time trouble’.

Hikaru was coasting on his way to his third victory in a row. His domination of Zurich is well known. Peter was again less impressive with his opening play, and after 21 moves, White had a very strong strategic move which would’ve made things very difficult for Black. However, there was a twist in the tale.

After Svidler’s 23…Nf5!!, there was no looking back. Svidler won to throw the race wide open!
 

Gelfand-Kramnik was a very interesting game that looked equal until almost the very end. However, I suggest going right to White’s 41^st move if you want to get the full story yourself!

More Impressions

Dr William Wirth, 86, is a former director of the Swiss financial services company, the Credit Suisse Group. He has sponsored chess for decades.

This player has made his intentions clear to the opponents.

Eugeny Atarov started journalism in 1992. He is a writer, photographer, book maker, graphic designer, etc. Two years ago he even started work with video and has the technical and production support to create the real TV-quality video. You can check his team Exciting Chess' channel on YouTube. He started to publish the videos just two weeks ago but already has 100 videos in the works now!

Alexei Shirov playing Russian talent FM Andrey Esipenko (2492) in the Open Masters.

The Zurich Alphorn! You can listen to four being played here.

Standings

Please note that the winner gets 2 points while a draw earns other player 1 point.

Games

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 gets half a point, and the loser gets zero points.

Link to Official site

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