World Cup 6.2: MVL pulls a miracle

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 six game two

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (above) was tortured by Vladimir Kramnik from the very beginning as White's intitiatve transformed into a more pleasant endgame which in turn ended in an endgame in which White had three pawns on the kingside against Black's two, with only rooks and knights. Kramnik pressed forward and eventually got a winning position, but a huge blunder gave the advantage away and he was unable to convert the Rook and Knight against Rook endgame.

Kramnik was not too pleased with having to play 125 moves of chess to draw

In the other game of the day Dmitri Andreikin (left) stayed faithful to his Orthodox set-up in the Queen's Gambit Declined to neutralize Evgeny Tomashevsky's attempts to take the match with the white pieces. Despite obtaining a small structural advantage as he was playing against an isolated queen's pawn, White could not really claim any significant edge. The players agreed to a draw in a position that was starting to become lifeless. Tomorrow the players will battle it out in the tiebreaks. Tomashevsky won an Armageddon against Ramirez and a Blitz thriller against Morozevich in rounds one and four, but has not played any tiebreaks besides that. Andreikin on the other hand has been on a tiebreak in every round except the second, in which he knocked out the Vietnamese player Nguyen Ngoc Truong.

Andreikin will go to yet another tiebreak, where he seems to be quite comfortable

All results of the sixth round games

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All photos by Nastja Karlovich

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: R1 – R2 – R3 – R4 – R5 - R6 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.