World Cup R4.2: Judit evens the score

The tournament is taking place in the Ugorian Chess Academy in the very heart of Khanty-Mansiysk, which has hosted three previous World Cups: 2005, 2007, and 2009. The 128 participants hail from 46 different countries, and are playing for a total prize fund of US $1.6 million. In addition the first three finisher get tickets to the Candidates tournament in the next World Championship cycle.

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Round four game two

The second game of round four was defined by comebacks, and what comebacks they were! The foremost, and most nerve-wracking, was Judit’s win over Lenier Dominguez which had the audience by the throat almost from the opening. We have full game commentary by GM Efstratios Grivas at the end of this report.

Next in line came Peter Heine-Nielsen who had lost in the first game to Vugar Gashimov, and seemed destined to end his excellent run, but he had other plans. After a quiet 5.e3 Gruenfeld, essentially resembling a QGD with a fianchettoed bishop for Black, the Dane negotiated the opening and early middlegame to his advantage and built an attack that yielded a decisive material surplus he converted in due time.

The third eleventh-hour save was by World Championship Candidate Alexander Grischuk against European Champion Vladimir Potkin. The latter has been playing superb chess so far, reminding all why he won the European Championship this year, and after winning his first game against Grischuk, seemed poised on making it to the last eight. Grischuk, who had a lackluster Russian championship just recently, was done with disappointments, and came back with a nice win when he broke down Potkin’s French Defense.

In fact, it was a bad day for the French, after Zerebukh also lost with it to Navara who completed his round with a fine 2-0 rout. After Zerebukh went for broke with a kamikaze attack in their first game, Navara showed him how it was done by demolishing the Ukrainian’s kingside decisively.

Gata Kamsky (above) also tried to be a part of the comeback group, after losing to Peter Svidler in the first game, and for a while seemed to have good chances of doing exactly that. He had White in a Ruy Lopez Archangelsk and had created serious threats against Black’s king, however Svidler showed just how double-edged the position was, and a couple of imprecisions later, it was his pieces that were swarming around the American’s king. Thus, instead of a comeback, Svidler completed a clean sweep of Kamsky, confirming his good phase after his very impressive victory at the recent Russian championship.

Also headed to tiebreaks are Cuban GM Lazaro Bruzon and Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine, who were unable to break their deadlock, as well as Vassily Ivanchuk and Bu Xiangzhi. Teimour Radjabov also passed straight to the next round after winning his first game against Jakovenko and then holding him to a draw in their second.

Watch him in the tiebreaks on Thursday: Cuban GM Lazaro Bruzon

Chinese GM Bu Xiangzhi, who is holding the great Vassily Ivanchuk

Judit evens the score

"The magnificent Judit Polgar managed to win on demand, playing black against Lenier Dominguez," writes the official tournament bulletin. The Cuban grandmaster only needed to make a draw in order to advance to the quarter-finals, but instead of playing it safe he went for a very sharp and principled line of the Sicilian. White sacrificed a piece, but failed to create a winning attack, and had to fight for a draw in the endgame. Black had two bishops against a rook and two pawns, but with limited material White had decent drawing chances. The nervous tension was extremely high. White made a couple of inaccuracies, and his situation became critical. However, Polgar missed a clear-cut win, and a well-known theoretical ending with rook + bishop vs. rook arose. White's position was theoretically lost, and Black, despite practical difficulties, slowly found the right sequence. GM Efstratios Grivas has kindly sent us annotations on this game of the day.

• Click to download the PGN of this game.

Results of round four

• Source: official results page

Remaining schedule of the World Chess Cup 2011

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