Paris 02: Fressinet scores, many draws

Sixth FIDE Grand Prix - Paris 2013

The sixth and final Grand Prix of the system is taking place at the Chapelle de la Villedieu, founded in 1180 by soldier-monks of the Order of the Temple. The playing site is considerably west of Paris. The tournament will determine the last qualifiers for the Candidates tournament for the next World Chess Championship cycle. This leg of the series is being played under classical time controls: Time control: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and then each player gets 15 minutes and an increment of 30 seconds per move after the second time control). No draws offers: Sofia rules!

A beautiful mix of the classical and the modern

Round 2

Tomashevsky, Evgeny ½-½ Gelfand, Boris
Both players know each other very well as Tomashevsky was one of Gelfand's second in the important match against Anand. Gelfand neutralized his opponent completely and accepted a draw by repetition in a position where he had a queen for a rook and a bishop but it was somewhat dangerous to play on.

Tomashevsky spent a lot of time in the opening and he was clearly not happy with the result

Bacrot, Etiene ½-½ Ivanchuk, Vassily
Ivanchuk equalized easily, Bacrot allowed a repetition on move 15.

Ivanchuk didn't really walk around for that long, between both of his games he hasn't yet played 40 moves of chess

Ponomariov, Ruslan ½-½ Giri, Anish
Ponomariov was unable to obtain much against Giri's Petroff. The bishop agaisnt knight duel really didn't favor the bishop. At least some credit has to be given to Ponomariov as he refused a repetition in an equal position to try to play for more. Even though he wasn't able to push through in the end it is refreshing that at least one player wanted to play chess today.

Anish Giri started with two blacks in the first two games, but he was able to hold the second one

Sergey Tiviakov (left) interviewing GM Robin van Kampen, Giri's second. Giri, van Kampen and Tiviakov all play under the Dutch flag.

Dominguez Perez, Leinier ½-½ Nakamura, Hikaru
Nakamura showed an impressive preparation and was able to obtain a good position against Dominguez's Spanish. He continued to play quickly but Dominguez position was still solid and Nakamura was unable to do anything with his huge time advantage. He finished the game with over two hours on the clock, despite starting the game with only two hours (he was added an extra one when they crossed move 40).

China's number one starts with two solid draws, like most of the tournament

Wang Hao ½-½ Caruana, Fabiano
Wang Hao employed the unusual 6.Na4!? idea against Caruana's Gruenfeld, but even in this variation the Italian was well prepared. The Chinese player sacrificed a pawn for some initiative but was too hasty in recovering it. After the move 18...Re8 it was clear that Black had enough counterplay and eventually a very drawish endgame was reached in which neither side could do much.

One of the local players is now tied at the lead: Laurent Fressinet with 1.5/2

Fressinet, Laurent 1-0 Grischuk, Alexander
An interesting game that went back and forth. It seemed that Grischuk's position was good from the opening and he had no issues in the resulting endgame. It seems that the Russian underestimated how much of a problem his bishop on b7 would become as after the strong pawn push 29.b4 and 30.b5! this light-squared bishop was completely entombed. Fressinet opened the queenside to highlight this point and in an already very difficult position Grischuk blundered.

"But I just beat this guy in Riga last week!" Fressinet took revenge from Grischuk eliminating him in the ACP cup not too long ago

Replay round two games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Schedule

The games start at 15:00h European time, 17:00h Moscow, 9 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.