World team extends lead

Round 2 (June 11, 2004)
	Petrosian Team	2 - 4	World Team
	Kasparov	½-½	Vallejo
	Leko	½-½	Bacrot
	Gelfand	½-½	van Wely
	Akopian	0-1	Adams
	Vaganian	½-½	Anand
	Lputian	0-1	Svidler
Overall score: World Team: 7.5 – 4.5 Petrosian Team
View games online • Official Site • Reports: R1

Is Elo destiny? Some days it seems so. Despite the occasional egalitarian yawp, the high-rated guys usually beat the lower-rated guys with relentless efficiency. This gives us upsets to cheer on occasion. Today was not one of those occasions. World team heavies Mickey Adams and Peter Svidler scored to push the lead to three points when the Petrosian team couldn't muster a victory.

Maybe it's more the French team than the Armenian team. Or perhaps the French Defense should be renamed the Armenian Defense. And considering the way it's going so far in Moscow the French may be happy to have their name off of the damn thing. All of the Armenian players use it and after two rounds each has had a chance to play it once. So far the score is 0.5-2.5.

The latest casualty was Vladimir Akopian, who went down in 25 flaming moves against Mickey Adams. The brevity is nothing unusual. In the past two years there have been over twenty Grandmaster miniatures in the French. Odds are we'll see at least one more in the next few days in Moscow.

The other decisive game was a fine illustration of the power of two bishops against the king. Svidler kept creating threats until Lputian made a decisive blunder in time trouble and fell into a mating net. It was the second loss for the event's lowest-rated player, although to be fair he has the rather unfortunate task of facing the World team's top guns right out of the gate. Plus, if Smbat Lputian can make it this far in life with so few vowels he can bounce back from a few tough losses.

The other games were balanced affairs with varying levels of fight. Gelfand and van Wely played a wild sequence of piece exchanges and agreed to a draw on move 26. Bacrot and Leko followed 22 moves of a Kasparov-Anand game before drawing on move 26. Vaganian ventured 19 moves against Anand before they made the piece.

Vallejo-Kasparov started out with all the signs of a battle. Kasparov has been analyzing Fischer's games for his books lately so playing the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf seems only natural. The problem is these lines have been analyzed half to death. They went through 20 moves of theory before Kasparov improved on a 1982 game. Vallejo had to play precisely to force the draw and the game ended in a perpetual check on move 34.