World Cup: Salinas’ astounding win and endgame analyses

A scintillating attack

Pablo Salinas (born in 1994) is grandmaster from Concepción, a city in central Chile. Three years after getting his GM title, Salinas arrived in Sochi as the 147th seed at the FIDE World Cup. He was paired up against Danish GM Mads Andersen (111th seed, rated 2579).

Andersen had the white pieces. In a tense middlegame position, the Danish failed to acknowledge his king’s vulnerability.

White needs to look out for a potential knight sacrifice on f2, due to the infiltration of Black’s heavy pieces via e3. While 19.Rf1 does not work, White has a strong recourse in the surprising 19.Qxe4 — which would be followed by 19...dxe4 20.Rxd7 Qe5 21.Rxb7 Bxc3 22.Bxc3 Rxc3 23.Nxc3 Qxc3 24.Rd1, with a dynamically balanced position.

None of this happened, as Andersen played 19.a3, trying to deal with the pin along the c-file. Salinas did not take long to find 19...Nxf2. The engines give 20.Bxd7 as the least bad alternative, but the position is actually lost for White already!

There followed 20.axb4 Nxh3+ 21.Kf1 Qxe3 22.Qf5 Nf6 23.Bc1

Master Class Vol.2: Mihail Tal

On this DVD Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Oliver Reeh and Karsten Müller present the 8. World Chess Champion in video lessons: his openings, his understanding of chess strategy, his artful endgame play, and finally his immortal combinations.

Black does not need to defend his queen, as after 23...Ng4 (bringing the other knight to the attack) White cannot play 24.Bxe3 due to 24...Nxe3#.

Andersen attacked the queen once again with 24.Rd3, and Salinas got to ignore the ‘threat’ once again with 24...d4, opening up the light-squared long diagonal. White played 25.Red1

And now the beautiful final blow: 25...Qg1+ 26.Nxg1 Nxh2#. A memorable win! Salinas now needs to hold a draw with the white pieces in game 2 to gain a ticket to the second round.

Salinas and Andersen played on board 56 | Photo: Eric Rosen

Endgame analyses by GM Karsten Müller

Our in-house expert had no trouble finding instructive endgame positions from the first day of play in Sochi. First, he noted that “great care is always required when simplifying into a pawn ending”.

Chess Endgames 14 - The golden guidelines of endgame play

Rules of thumb are the key to everything when you are having to set the correct course in a complex endgame. In this final DVD of his series on the endgame, our endgame specialist introduces you to the most important of these rules of thumb.

Egyptian GM Essam El Gindy faltered by entering a pawn endgame with 71.Rxf5+ gxf5 72.Kxd3 Kxe5. German GM Rasmus Svane won the game three moves later.

The second game in the replayer below shows the right technique to convert a position with knight, bishop and pawn against a lone rook from the game between Krikor Mekhitarian (Brazil) and Juan Carlos Gonzalez (Mexico). 

• Full schedule
• Pairings and results: Open | Women’s
• All games with computer analysis: Open | Women’s

Links

• Official site
• Players lists and full pairings of FIDE World Cups published