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2003
World Junior Championship
Official site
Many people noticed something odd about the Azerbaijani Junior Olympiad team in Bled last year. The first thing you noticed was that there is no such thing as the Azerbaijani Junior Olympiad team. It was the regular Olympiad team and it had the average age of the crowd at an N'Sync concert.
Led by Teimour Radjabov, the team of teens had a credible result in Bled and now half of them are playing on home turf in the World Junior Championship in the ancient city of Nakhchivan. (Radjabov has moved on to the supertournament tour.)
Several
of these youngsters are maintaining rating growth charts that are still almost
completely vertical. With the handy "Elo Profile" function in ChessBase
8 we get terrifying graphs like these from the Azerbaijanis. In another year
the country with a population of around eight million could have four players
in the top 100 all under 20 years old.
The local players aren't helping each other too much so far. Mamedyarov took first in a battle of top seeds by beating Gashimov. (Vugar, not his older brother Sarkhan, who is also playing.) In the 10th round Gashimov is paired with another teammate, Mamedov. The top board is Mamedyarov-Harikrishna.
Speaking of Harikrishna, India is another country with considerable junior achievements and they also have an aggressive national program to promote their young talents. They have several contenders in this year's event in Harikrishna and Ganguly.
There are still four rounds to go with the 13th and final round taking place on July 3. Below are a few round nine highlights.
The point here is that White can't play 1.Rxd5 because 1...Rxe3! wins the farm. If 2.Qxe3 Qe1+ 3.Bf1 Qxe3. White suffered on with 1.Bf2 but didn't have nearly
enough compensation after 1...Qe7 (..Qg5) 2.Bxa6 Qe4. |
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White is the Ukrainian Alexander Zubov. (Apparently not Oleg as was given in the game file.) Izoria was crushed immediately after 1...fxg6? 2.Bxf6+ exf6 3.Rxg6+! and Black resigned as 3...Kxg6 4.e5+ wins the black queen minding her own business over on b7. Junior 8 finds a typically no-blooded computer defense
with 1...Bxh4 2.Kg1 fxg6 3.Rxg6+ Kf7 and Black has good survival chances
after 4.Rg2 Rcg8. |
Black, the German Kritz, has a choice of pawns to take. He played 1...Bxh3? As the saying goes, "he chose.... poorly." The refutation was 2.h6! and Black has no chance to hold this endgame after the pawn advances to h7. (2...Rxh6 3.Ng8+) Black would have had typical Berlin suffering chances
after 1...gxh5. |
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If you read our last report on Enghien and the game Bauer-Korchnoi you'll see this one coming. The f5 pawn push against e6 and g6 takes advantage of the black king's total lack of protection and the black queen's lack of escape squares. Rh4 is threatened and black has no defense. 18.f5 b4 [18...exf5 19.Nxd5 Be6 20.b3; 19.Rh4 d4 20.Qg5 1-0 |
Mig Greengard
