For those chess lovers who today divided their attention between the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament and the first race of the Formula 1 season in Melbourne, it may be interesting to know that this year the Amber tournament is not held in the Jockey Club, which in the past two years served as hospitality lounge and press centre (together with the adjacent rooms where the games actually took place), but in the Formula 1 Room of the Fairmont Monte Carlo Hotel. (And, for completeness’ sake, in the Lacoste Room next door where players and guests can have a drink and analyze after the games.) So, instead of equestrian paraphernalia such as paintings of thorough-breds, a bronze life-size horse and bar stools with leather saddles on top, we are now in an environment where modernist paintings of race cars set the tone.
One further detail that should be mentioned before we give a description of what happened in the second round, is the fact that one of the two leaders after the first round, Vasily Ivanchuk, celebrated his 38th birthday today.
Not unexpectedly the blindfold game between Vishy Anand and Teimour Radjabov saw a Sveshnikov Variation of the Sicilian, an opening that both players must have studied for hundreds and hundreds of hours. Therefore it was quite remarkable that Anand got a winning advantage so soon. Misplaying his position, Radjabov allowed Anand to both exchange the white-squared bishops and play 26.Na6. White’s efforts were crowned with 27.Nb6! after which White still had to pay attention to some tricks, but in fact the rest was plain sailing.
The rapid game was a great fight that ended in another win for Anand. It was so complicated that he apologetically commented after the game ‘I wish I knew what was happening!’ After the opening he was worse, but he found it hard to pinpoint where exactly Radjabov had let his advantage slip. One thing was sure, once the black king penetrated the white queenside, the tables had definitely turned to Anand’s advantage.
As might be expected Vasily Ivanchuk arrived highly motivated for his blindfold game against Alexander Morozevich. Not only was the Ukrainian phenomenon eager to score a point against one of the main contenders for first place (and the top favourite in the blindfold), he also very much wanted to give himself a nice birthday present in the process. The opening could hardly have gone better when with 18.Nxd5! he robbed Black of a valuable pawn. The follow-up was not too precise, but when Black played 26…f6? (Morozevich: ‘Any move but this one’), Ivanchuk was back in business again. But it wasn’t to be. Although the rook ending was completely winning for White he failed to convert his advantage. Just play through the final phase of the game and you’ll understand why Morozevich commented with a shrug ‘He tricked himself’.
The rapid game also ended in disappointment for Ivanchuk. In a sharp Najdorf he got a splendid position after White’s unfortunate 26th move. Black was calling the shots and probably he could have played better with 33…b4. The way the game went, Morozevich managed to create enough counter threats and on move 38 Ivanchuk abandoned his winning plans and went for perpetual check.
Loek van Wely faced the tough task to recover from his 0-2 defeat in the first round in an encounter with the world champion. In the blindfold game Vladimir Kramnik livened up things with a piece sacrifice (26.Nxf7) where he might have gone for a solid edge with 26.Bc3. The correctness of the sacrifice was debatable, as after 26…Kxf7 27.Rxe6 Red7 White would not find it easy to prove an advantage, but when Black chose another road he was slightly worse. Kramnik kept pressing and once he managed to get his king to the h-file in the ending there was no way for Van Wely to escape his third consecutive loss.
In the rapid game the Dutchman was poorly paid for his courage. In the middlegame he tried to build up an attack against the black king. His only problem was that his black-squared bishop was locked up on the queenside, unable to take part in the action. Perhaps he should have been more realistic about this factor when he decided to sidestep a perpetual check hoping for more than a draw. With 33.Be2 he played on but he went on a mission that mainly caused him problems. The truth must have started to sink in after 41…Qc2. Black won a piece and as Van Wely had to find out this time there no longer was a perpetual check.
In the second blindfold session Paco Vallejo scored his first point, but the Spanish grandmaster was rightly modest in victory. His win over Magnus Carlsen was a lucky affair after a prolonged defence. Vallejo was critical of his opening set-up that had only brought him problems. ‘I was suffering all through the game and only at the end, when I finally had the draw within reach he blundered.’ Carlsen stepped into the abyss with 39…Qf3? as he forgot that White could play 42.Qxe6+ which sealed Black’s fate.
In the rapid game Carlsen again tried hard to win. And he tried for a long time. After the game he believed that he missed good chance when he played 45.Rxb7 where 45.Rb5 would have been stronger. That move doesn’t win a pawn, as did the text-move, but it would have left Black with many weaknesses. Now he did win a pawn, but the rook and bishop ending that remained definitely looked more like a draw than a win for White. Carlsen plodded on for many moves and once they reached move 80 the arbiter calculated that the 50 move rule would apply on move 107. These speculations were discarded on move 87 when a pawn left the board, but nevertheless the game ended in a draw on move 108 thanks to a threefold repetition.
The blindfold game between Peter Svidler and Boris Gelfand may have confused the online viewers. Was there a mistake in the transmission? Or was Svidler really playing 1.d4? Indeed he was. Not thrilled by the prospect of another Petroff he wanted to give a fashionable line in the Slav a twist. It wasn’t a great success. In the position in which the game was drawn after 21 moves Svidler thought that if anyone was better, it was Black.
In the rapid game Gelfand got a fine game from the opening and could have obtained good chances with 11.Nxe6 fxe6 12.Nd4. Instead he played 11.Bxd5 (Svidler: ‘You should never give up this g2 bishop in such a position.’) allowing his opponent to reach a more or less level game. After 25 moves Svidler sat thinking if there still was a way to keep the game going, but having investigated the options he proposed a draw.
‘A clean game’, Levon Aronian called his blindfold game against Peter Leko. On move 12 the Armenian grandmaster deviated from the game they recently played in Linares. There he had pushed 12.e4, this time he preferred 12.Qd2. In hindsight he felt that three moves later 15.a3 would have been a more principled choice. Now Leko equalized with the correct 16…Bxb5 and although Aronian kept pressuring in the endgame that ensued, a draw was the logical outcome.
The rapid game was less clean. An aggressive Leko got a wonderful set-up from the opening and might have posed his opponent huge problems had he continued 18.Ne4 (when after 18…cxd4 he continues 19.Qf4). However, after the immediate 18.Qf4 the game was messy. Leko’s saw his hopes vanish when Black played 20…Bxg5 (probably the move he missed). Aronian took over and calmly he hauled in the point after 37 moves.
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Sede Del Torneo 
Vallejo - Carlsen 
(586 lecturas)