Tal-Mem R9: All games drawn, three grandmasters win

The Tal Memorial chess festival is being held in Moscow from November 5th to 19th, 2006. It is a round-robin super-tournament of Category 20, with participants from seven countries. The rating favorite is Peter Svidler, 2750, Russia, the dark horse is 15-year-old Magnus Carlsen of Norway, at 2698 the only participant rated below 2700. All games start at 15:00h Moscow time (= 13:00h CET, 12:00 noon London, 7 a.m. New York). There is live broadcast on the official site and on Playchess.com.

Round nine (final)

We also apologise for mobilising thousands of spectators to log into the Playchess server with promises of excitement and drama in the final round, and especially to those who left work early to catch it. Here for the record are the games of the Tal Memorial Moscow RUS (9), 16.11.2006:

Ponomariov,R (2703) - Leko,P (2741) [E12] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.Nc3 Bb7 5.a3 d5 6.cxd5 Nxd5 7.Qc2 Nxc3 8.bxc3 Be7 9.e4 0-0 10.Bd3 c5 11.0-0 Qc7 12.Qe2 Nd7 13.Bb2 Rfd8 14.d5 exd5 15.exd5 Bf6 16.c4 b5 17.cxb5 Bxd5 18.Bxf6 Nxf6 19.Bc4 Re8 1/2-1/2

Mamedyarov,S (2728) - Svidler,P (2750) [E60] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.g3 c6 5.Bg2 d5 6.cxd5 cxd5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.Nc3 Ne4 9.Ne5 Nxc3 10.bxc3 Nxe5 11.dxe5 0-0 12.Qxd5 Qxd5 13.Bxd5 Rd8 14.Bg2 1/2-1/2

Gelfand,B (2733) - Aronian,L (2741) [E01] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 Bb4+ 5.Bd2 Be7 6.Nf3 0-0 7.0-0 c6 8.Bf4 b6 9.Nc3 Bb7 10.Nd2 Nh5 11.Be5 Nd7 12.e4 Nxe5 13.dxe5 dxc4 14.Bf3 g6 15.Bxh5 gxh5 16.Nxc4 1/2-1/2

Grischuk,A (2710) - Carlsen,M (2698) [D38] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 0-0 7.e3 c5 8.dxc5 Nbd7 9.Rc1 Qa5 10.Nd2 b6 11.Be2 bxc5 12.0-0 Bxc3 13.Rxc3 Qxa2 14.Qc2 Rb8 15.Rb1 Qa5 16.Bxf6 Nxf6 17.Nb3 1/2-1/2

Morozevich,A (2747) - Shirov,A (2720) [C89] 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 d5 9.d4 dxe4 10.Nxe5 Nxe5 11.dxe5 Qxd1 12.Bxd1 Nd7 13.Bc2 Nxe5 14.Bxe4 Rb8 15.Bf4 Bd6 16.Bxe5 Bxe5 17.Bxh7+ Kxh7 18.Rxe5 Rd8 19.Kf1 f6 20.Re3 Rd1+ 21.Re1 Rxe1+ 22.Kxe1 Bf5 23.Na3 Re8+ 24.Kd2 Rd8+ 25.Ke3 Re8+ 26.Kd2 Rd8+ 1/2-1/2

The winners were Aronian, Ponomariov and Leko. We believe that Leko won first place on tie break, but you can check it out for yourself. Fourth was Gelfand, followed by Mamedyarov, Grischuk and the rest.

Final standings

Links

• Official web site – slowly improving
• All games so far in PGN

PS: We will hopefully overcome our disappointment soon and return to our normal enthusiastic style of reporting. Perhaps the upcoming super blitz tournament, which is part of the Tal Memorial 2006 and started today, will help.

Schedule and results