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In the latest instalment of his weekly show, Daniel King looked at what he dubbed as the “raging Rossolimo”, where he analysed a game from the Sitges tournament, in which Aditya Samant managed to upset Adhiban from the white side of the Sicilian system. A few days later, Karthikeyan Murali opted to use the same opening with black in the all-important encounter against co-leader Kirill Alekseenko. The Russian prevailed to keep his perfect score and go into the rest day as the sole leader.
Before Friday’s round, the co-leaders had five players standing a half point behind. Only one of them managed to score a full point, though, and is now in sole second place — Armenian grandmaster Karen Grigoryan, who defeated 2021 European champion Anton Demchenko with the white pieces.
With four rounds to go, set to take place between Monday and Thursday, nine players are sharing third place on 5 out of 6, including the top two seeds in Sitges, Yu Yangyi from China and Hans Niemann from the United States.
The Ruy Lopez Breyer Variation
Pavel Eljanov explains in depth what Gyula Breyer already saw in 1911 and what became an opening choice of the likes of Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand or Carlsen. The Breyer Variation, which is characterised by the knight retreat to b8.
One of my yesterday favorites 😍
— Isabel García de la Cruz (@IsaGeller) December 15, 2022
Can you recognize the player?#SunwaySitges pic.twitter.com/kTph56dAzP
A game from the fifth round illustrated how important it is to calculate precisely in pawn endgames. Our in-house expert, GM Karsten Müller, looked at a position with only kings and pawns on the board which saw a 2400+ rated player faltering and losing the game.
| Rk. | Name | Rtg | Pts. | TB1 | ||
| 1 |
|
GM | Alekseenko Kirill | 2672 | 6 | 20,5 |
| 2 |
|
GM | Grigoryan Karen H. | 2619 | 5,5 | 21 |
| 3 |
|
GM | Niemann Hans Moke | 2698 | 5 | 23 |
| 4 |
|
GM | Karthikeyan Murali | 2620 | 5 | 22,5 |
| 5 |
|
GM | Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. | 2607 | 5 | 22 |
| 6 |
|
GM | Yu Yangyi | 2728 | 5 | 21,5 |
| 7 |
|
GM | Petrosyan Manuel | 2621 | 5 | 20,5 |
| 8 |
|
GM | Esipenko Andrey | 2678 | 5 | 19,5 |
| 9 |
|
GM | Dardha Daniel | 2606 | 5 | 19 |
| 10 |
|
GM | Tin Jingyao | 2562 | 5 | 18,5 |
| 11 |
|
GM | Tabatabaei Mohammad Amin | 2660 | 5 | 18 |
| 12 |
|
GM | Puranik Abhimanyu | 2616 | 4,5 | 23 |
| 13 |
|
GM | Safarli Eltaj | 2616 | 4,5 | 22 |
| 14 |
|
IM | Samant Aditya S | 2470 | 4,5 | 21,5 |
| 15 |
|
GM | Demchenko Anton | 2632 | 4,5 | 21,5 |
| 16 |
|
GM | Kollars Dmitrij | 2610 | 4,5 | 21 |
| 17 |
|
GM | Sumets Andrey | 2506 | 4,5 | 21 |
| 18 |
|
IM | Sidhant Mohapatra | 2337 | 4,5 | 21 |
| 19 |
|
GM | Adhiban B. | 2611 | 4,5 | 20,5 |
| 20 |
|
GM | Svane Frederik | 2568 | 4,5 | 20,5 |
| 21 |
|
GM | Durarbayli Vasif | 2612 | 4,5 | 20 |
| 22 |
|
GM | Kraemer Martin | 2583 | 4,5 | 20 |
| 23 |
|
GM | Aryan Chopra | 2618 | 4,5 | 20 |
| 24 |
|
GM | Cheparinov Ivan | 2688 | 4,5 | 19,5 |
| 25 |
|
GM | Jones Gawain C B | 2630 | 4,5 | 19,5 |
| 26 |
|
GM | Sanal Vahap | 2597 | 4,5 | 19,5 |
|
|
GM | Raja Rithvik R | 2453 | 4,5 | 19,5 | |
| 28 |
|
IM | Tahay Alexis | 2400 | 4,5 | 19,5 |
| 29 |
|
IM | Prraneeth Vuppala | 2427 | 4,5 | 19 |
| 30 |
|
GM | Korobov Anton | 2662 | 4,5 | 19 |
A Repertoire against the Italian Game
The repertoire against the Giuoco Pianissimo examined on this video course, provides Black with methods of evading this slightly one-sided pattern, yielding sound play in double-edged positions.
