Medias Kings Round six: Commentary by GM Rogozenco

ROMGAZ and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade” of Bucharest are staging a double round robin tournament with six top GMs: the world's second highest ranked player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway; Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk, currently the world's number five; Sergey Karjakin, former child prodigy and youngest GM of all time; top US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, clear winner of this year's Wijk aan Zee tournament; Teimour Radjabov, one of Azerbaijan's top GMs, and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, the best Romanian player. The competition is taking place from June 11th to 22nd 2011 in Medias, Romania.

Round six results

Commentary by GM Dorian Rogozenco

The rest day over, the players returned to the chess boards in Medias to start the second half of the Kings' Tournament. Nakamura-Carlsen was the first game to finish with a draw after the repetition of moves. Nakamura's attempt to surprise Carlsen in Ruy Lopez with the move 11.c4 didn't really pay off, as the Norwegian quickly achieved a comfortable equality. It looked like Black can fight for advantage, but at the press conference Carlsen recognized that he didn't feel very well before the game and therefore he went for simplifications and forced the draw by repetition.

The ceremonial first move in the game Nakamura-Carlsen is executed by Josu Fernández, the Organisation Director of the International Chess Festival “Villa de Bilbao”, which will be staging the Grand Slam of which the Medias Kings is part

Magnus in action, watched by Adrian Marcel Piteiu, CEO of RomGAZ

The second game to finish was Radjabov-Ivanchuk. The Ukrainian played the Semi-Tarrasch of the Queen's Gambit declined, which caught the Azerbaijani Grandmaster somewhat unprepared. Radjabov declared at the beginning of the tournament that he can still feel the tiredness after the Candidate matches in Kazan, therefore in today's game when faced with a situation to take a critical decision, he decided to avoid risks. White accepted a quiet endgame, which looked somewhat more pleasant for Black, but which in the end Radjabov held to a draw without visible efforts.

At the start of the game Radjabov vs Ivanchuk

The longest encounter of the sixth round was at the same time the only decisive game of the day. In Karjakin-Nisipeanu the Romanian played the Schliemann Gambit, which seems to become a popular opening in Kings' Tournament. On move 15 Karjakin prepared a novelty, which put pressure on Black. After a long thought Nisipenu sacrificed two pawns for activity of his pieces. He quickly won back one pawn, but never recovered the second one. Black's position was always very close to draw and at some moments Nisipeanu even missed more or less clear ways to escape. However, being under constant pressure and in time trouble Nisipeanu was forced to give up in the end. A hard-fought win for Sergey Karjakin, who together with Magnus Carlsen shares the 1-2 places with four points out of six games.

A friendly exchange between Karjakin and Nisipeanu before the start of the game

The game is symbolically started by Adrian Marcel Piteiu, CEO of RomGAZ

The hero of round six: Sergey Karjakin

All photos by Ionut Anisca for the organisation

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Move	N	Result	Elo	Players

1.e4	1,174,618	54%	2421	---
1.d4	952,919	55%	2434	---
1.Nf3	283,849	56%	2440	---
1.c4	183,334	56%	2442	---
1.g3	19,804	56%	2427	---
1.b3	14,464	54%	2427	---
1.f4	5,926	48%	2377	---
1.Nc3	3,855	50%	2384	---
1.b4	1,775	48%	2379	---
1.a3	1,239	54%	2405	---
1.e3	1,075	49%	2409	---
1.d3	961	50%	2378	---
1.g4	669	46%	2361	---
1.h4	465	54%	2381	---
1.c3	436	51%	2426	---
1.h3	284	56%	2419	---
1.a4	117	59%	2462	---
1.f3	100	47%	2427	---
1.Nh3	92	67%	2511	---
1.Na3	43	60%	2477	---

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1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.c3 d6 9.h3 Nb8 The knight goes to d7 freeing the path for the c-pawn. 10.d4 Nbd7

With plenty of strategical ideas for both sides the Breyer Variation of the Ruy Lopez is a classical opening line, which Magnus Carlsen played many times before. 11.c4 Nakamura certainly relied on the surprise factor of this move. In the vast majority of games White plays here 11.Nbd2 11...c6 12.Nc3 "I was very happy when I saw this move, as now I can conveniently close the position", said Carlsen after the game. 12.a3 would have kept somewhat more tension in the position. 12...b4 13.Na4 c5 14.d5 In this close position the main battlefield is going to be the kingside. Re8!?

A somewhat unexpected move in such positions. Usually in this structure Black is trying to prepare f7-f5 and therefore he needs the rook on f8 for that. However, Carlsen had another plan in mind - he wanted to transfer the knight to g6. 15.Bc2 Nf8 16.a3 a5 17.b3 The knight from a4 is coming to d3. Ng6 18.Nb2 Bd7

19.Nh2 Now Nakamura improves the position of the other knight. h6 And Carlsen is doing the same - the knight from f6 needs a square in order to prepare the favourable for Black exchange of the dark-squared bishops via g5. 20.Nf1 Nh7 21.Ne3 Bg5 22.axb4 axb4 23.Rxa8 Qxa8 24.Nf5 Bxc1 25.Qxc1

25...Bxf5 Continuing to exchanges pieces. Black wasn't obliged to hurry and could keep a comfortable position with 25...Qa6 - a move which Magnus, as he admitted, would have normally played, had he not been feeling tired. 26.exf5 Ngf8 Already around here Carlsen saw the possible repetition of moves and he just went for it without second thought. 27.Nd1 Nf6 28.f3 Qa2 29.g4 Ra8 30.Nf2 Qa3

White cannot really avoid the repetition. At this moment both sides must have been happy with the outcome. 31.Qb1 31.Qd2 allows Black to improve with Qb2 while the only reasonable attempt 31.h4 can bring White nothing but troubles in the arising endgame mentioned by Carlsen: Qxc1 32.Rxc1 g5 33.fxg6 Nxg6 34.Bxg6 fxg6 35.g5 hxg5 36.hxg5 Nh5 37.Ne4 Ra6 and with his rook on the open file only Black can play for a win. 31...Qa2 32.Qc1 Qa3 33.Qb1 Qa2 34.Qc1 ½–½

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White	EloW	Black	EloB	Res	Year	ECO	Event	Rnd

Nakamura,H

-

Carlsen,M

-

½–½

2011

C95

5th Kings Tournament

6

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Standings after six rounds

Schedule and results

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