The FIDE World Cup is a knockout, starting with 128 players, with two games
(90 min for 40 moves + 30 min for the rest, with 30 seconds increment) between
pairs of players. The tiebreaks consist of two rapid games (25 min + 10
sec), then two accelerated games (10 min + 10 sec), and finally an Armageddon.
The winner and the runner-up of the World Cup 2013 will qualify for the
Candidates Tournament of the next World Championship cycle. The venue is
the city of Tromsø, which lies in the northern-most region of Norway,
almost 400 km inside the Arctic Circle. You can find all details
and links to many ChessBase
articles on Tromsø here. The World Cup starts on Sunday, August
11th and lasts until September 3rd (tiebreaks, closing ceremony). Each round
lasts three days, while the final will consist of four classical games.
Thursday August 29 is a free day. A detailed schedule can be found here.

Round four game one

Dmitri Andreikin (right) and Sergey Karjakin
ended in an uneventful
draw after Karjakin's position become completely unbreachable.

Hikaru Nakamura (right) tried an unusual approach against Anton Korobov's
Najdorf, more of a positional style in which White tries to regroup to take
advantage of the weak d5 square. However at some point White's regrouping
became stagnant and with no way of making progress the players agreed to
a repetition.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (right) and Boris Gelfand had a wild affair, although
it is clear that at least one player had prepared the entirety of the game.
We are slightly mystified by the official website's clock, which made it
seem as if Gelfand was the one playing instantly, when by looking at the
video and from the Playchess timestamp it was clear that MVL was the one
blitzing the moves. The game was very theoretically important, with Gelfand
playing the 16...a6! novelty that started a long forcing variation. Gelfand
had to play many forced moves, but he found them all and at the end White
won a rook but had to allow a perpetual check.

Fabiano Caruana (right) obtained a complex position against Julio Granda
Zuniga. The Italian pointed to 16...Bxc3 as an innacuracy, but it seems
that Black's position was manageable until his blunder with 20...f5?? Black
counted on a pin to discourage the en passant, but simple tactics allowed
White to capture this pawn and immediately win the game as Black had nothing
better than to resign since the pin was nothing but a ghost.

Peter Svidler (left) can count his lucky stars after he survived a horrible
position against Le Quang Liem. The position was almost completely symmetrical,
but Black was unable to castle and his attempt to do so artificially backfired
as White was able to create a lot of central and kingside pressure. White
had several important chances in the position, but the most important was
23.Rxd5! instead of 23.exd5 as in the resulting position the trade of rooks
would have been a huge improvement for White. As it was in the game Black
obtained compensation for the pawn and at the end was even the one thinking
of continuing the game to try to win, but White's rook was just about active
enough to prevent that from happening.

Gata Kamsky (right) against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was arguably the game
of the tournament so far. In a position where the American was running the
risk of being positionally worse, he did the Sicilian thing to do and sacrificed
material to start a strong attack. The attack looked really strong, but
Black had an extra piece and White's three pawns were not completely compensating
for this fact because they were quite blocked and if pieces ever got traded
they would have been picked off easily. The game was really unclear until
Mamedyarov's mistake 23...Kg7? After this Kamsky's moves were accurate and
deadly. Every move came with a threat and Mamedyarov eventually made another
mistake which allowed the American to finish him off in elegant style.

Vladimir Kramnik mentioned that he was influenced by a game between Aronian-Giri
in which Aronian won with White, but he was able to obtain a good position
in this game. Ivanchuk panicked in a position he was still alright, and
started getting into difficulties as Black obtained a strong passed d-pawn.
Ivanchuk managed to stabilize his position, but made a decisive blunder
by putting his queen on the b-file, which allowed Black to switch gears
and sacrifice a pawn for a decisive attack with a queen and a rook. White's
king was helpless against this type of firepower and Kramnik scored a very
important win with Black, and will only need to hold a draw tomorrow to
advance. Kramnik noticed his opponent was nervous when Black held the advantage,
and this led him to mistakes.

The battle between Russians was a very long affair. Evgeny Tomashevsky
(left) was able to obtain a good position from the opening, but Alexander
Morozevich slowly but surely was able to get a more pleasant position. Both
sides shuffled for a long time, White trying to create some kind of progress
while Black was consistently parrying his opponent's threats while retaining
some counterplay on the kingside. The players didn't see anything for either
side and agreed to a draw in a position that still had some life in it.
Pictures provided by Paul Truong in Tromsø
All results of the fourth round games
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Morozevich, Alex. |
2739 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tomashevsky, E. |
2706 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Caruana, Fabiano |
2796 |
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Granda, Julio |
2664 |
0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Ivanchuk, Vassily |
2731 |
0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kramnik, Vladimir |
2784 |
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Le, Quang Liem |
2702 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Svidler, Peter |
2746 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Andreikin, Dmitry |
2716 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Karjakin, Sergey |
2772 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Nakamura, Hikaru |
2772 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Korobov, Anton |
2720 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Vachier-Lagrave, M |
2719 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gelfand, Boris |
2764 |
½
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Player |
Rtg |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
Pts |
Kamsky, Gata |
2741 |
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mamedyarov, S. |
2775 |
0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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Video reports from Tromsø