6/12/2012 – It was a highly entertaining round once again, but this time Magnus Carlsen was at the center of it. The number one took incredible risks throughout his game to try and beat Grischuk, but eventually they drew as the time control arrived. Morozevich and Radjabov played a lukewarm game and drew. Caruana was the only win, beating Tomashevsky. Full report with notes by GM Alejandro Ramirez.
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Winning starts with what you know The new version 18 offers completely new possibilities for chess training and analysis: playing style analysis, search for strategic themes, access to 6 billion Lichess games, player preparation by matching Lichess games, download Chess.com games with built-in API, built-in cloud engine and much more.
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Seventh Tal Memorial in Moscow
The event is a ten-player round robin event, is taking place from June
8th to 18th in the Pashkov House (Vozdvizhenka Street 3/5, p.1), Moscow,
Russia. Rest days are June 11 and 15. Time control: 100
minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, and
15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per
move starting from move one. Games start at 15:00h
local time (last round 13:00h).
Draw offers are not allowed until after the first time control. The participants
are required to comment on their games in the press center after each
round. The prize fund is 100,000 Euros.
Round 4: Tuesday,
June 12, 2012
Fabiano Caruana
1-0
Ev. Tomashevsky
Luke McShane
½-½
Hikaru Nakamura
Vladimir Kramnik
½-½
Levon Aronian
Alex. Morozevich
½-½
Teimour Radjabov
Magnus Carlsen
½-½
Alexander Grischuk
Round four
With four out of five games ending in draws and not changes in the top places,
you might be inclined to conclude the round was uneventful or dull, but this
was far from the case. In fact, the only win of the round was actually one of
the least eventful games, in spite of the result.
After a first round loss to Morozevich, Caruana is back to 50% with his
win over Tomashevsky
Of course, this is not meant to besmirch Fabiano Caruana’s win over Evgeny
Tomashevsky. Tomashevsky mishandled the opening, gave up a pawn to try and get
play, and eventually went down. The two leaders, Alexander Morozevich
and Teimour Radjabov, banged heads, but neither made any real progress
and the draw came as no surprise.
Vladimir Kramnik was actually annoyed after his draw against Levon Aronian,
and had managed to achieve a very healthy advantage, one that he felt he might
have better negotiated. Instead, he failed to find the best way to develop it,
and the Armenian genius managed to neutralize the threats and liquidate into
a dead drawn endgame.
Vladimir Kramnik was miffed that he was unable to do more with his advantage,
but
is still in third, just half a point behind the leaders.
The game of the round was the incredibly complicated slugfest between Magnus
Carlsen and Alexander Grischuk. Carlsen had been on the ropes in two games,
and made nothing in his third, and was visibly anxious to stop the series of
draws and promote his claims to the top prize.
Carlsen was in no mood for a quiet game, and went all out in his unique
style, for a win.
This led to some highly unorthodox strategic ideas in which he deliberately
allowed his kingside pawns to be shattered and dark-squared bishop to be boxed
in, in exchange for play on the light squares and ideas of his own. Even Garry
Kasparov, who has never been shy about his opinions, when he checked in to see
how the games were going, took one look and refused to pronounce anything beyond
it being a “strange game”.
Alexander Grischuk valiantly fought off a kamikaze Carlsen
Eventually the mess began to untangle and Carlsen threw more gasoline on the
fire by sacrificing his exchange, but only managed to eat up all his and Grischuk’s
time on the clocks, and with seconds left, forced Black into a repetition.
Annotated game by GM Alejandro Ramirez
The longest game of the round was once more Hikaru Nakamura’s,
showing his desire to fight and play to the bitter end. Luke McShane achieved
a huge advantage, that Kasparov, checking in Playchess, summarily declared “strategically
winning”. However, the Englishman lost the thread and when his chronic
time-trouble appeared, deteriorated into a pawn-down rook endgame that was nevertheless
a clear draw. When play continued even in defiance of its futile nature, GM
Ian Rogers, commenting on the live feed (see below for link) jokingly suggested
online spectators check the TV for a good football game instead. On the upside:
it beats unfought draws.
The games are being 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
11 or any of our Fritz
compatible chess programs.
2nd Move Anti-Sicilian Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 12090 games from Mega 2025 or the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 874 are annotated.
Ruy Lopez Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 12092 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 1276 are annotated.
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