Tal Memorial November 10, 2007
There was only one decisive game in round 1 of Tal Memorial today. Fortunately is was not Kramnik-Carlsen.
Magnus normally wants to win irrespective of the colour, but he is realistic enough to consider drawing with black against Kramnik's Catalan quite a challenge in itself.
They played the same 10....Bd6-line as in Gelfand-Anand in the World Championship in September, and Magnus was a bit surprised when Kramnik did not have (or did not present) anything better than the line they played.
After 18.... Qd5 Magnus considered black to be at least OK.
Maybe white's play could have been improved but as it went Magnus had sufficient compensation for the pawn and when Kramnik played h4 Magnus could force the drawing line 26.... Nf3+ 27.Kh1 Qc8 28.Nf4 Qg4 etc. If white had chosen 28.Qd7 Magnus thought black would be equal or better after Rc2.
In a last attempt to avoid the threat of perpetual with Nh4-f3-h4 etc, Kramnik sacked a rook on f5 to reach a drawn ending. 0,5-0,5 after 40 moves.
For a drawn game, the audience got a good show both with regard to the game itself and by the time consume. Magnus more or less blitzed out the first 25 moves and spent less than 35 minutes on the whole game constantly keeping the pressure on Kramnik!
Kamsky looked a likely winner in the middlegame against Gelfand but suddenly gave (or blundered) away his extra pawn. Draw.
Alekseev-Ivanchuk and Jakovenko-Mamedyarov looked balanced and ended in relatively early draws. In a tense position as black against Leko, Shirov sacked his bishop on d4 for 2 pawn and some initiative. It looked quite reasonable for black but he must have missed the best continuation somewhere. After exchanging queens, Leko could quickly exchange more material to reach a won end-game. 1-0.
Leko is off to a great start, leading the tournament and playing white again tomorrow.
Tomorrow Magnus has white against Alekseev. Their 3 previous encounters in classical chess has ended in draw although Magnus was fairly close to winning in Dortmund in June.
Henrik Carlsen
Moscow, November 10th
Magnus normally wants to win irrespective of the colour, but he is realistic enough to consider drawing with black against Kramnik's Catalan quite a challenge in itself.
They played the same 10....Bd6-line as in Gelfand-Anand in the World Championship in September, and Magnus was a bit surprised when Kramnik did not have (or did not present) anything better than the line they played.
After 18.... Qd5 Magnus considered black to be at least OK.
Maybe white's play could have been improved but as it went Magnus had sufficient compensation for the pawn and when Kramnik played h4 Magnus could force the drawing line 26.... Nf3+ 27.Kh1 Qc8 28.Nf4 Qg4 etc. If white had chosen 28.Qd7 Magnus thought black would be equal or better after Rc2.
In a last attempt to avoid the threat of perpetual with Nh4-f3-h4 etc, Kramnik sacked a rook on f5 to reach a drawn ending. 0,5-0,5 after 40 moves.
For a drawn game, the audience got a good show both with regard to the game itself and by the time consume. Magnus more or less blitzed out the first 25 moves and spent less than 35 minutes on the whole game constantly keeping the pressure on Kramnik!
Kamsky looked a likely winner in the middlegame against Gelfand but suddenly gave (or blundered) away his extra pawn. Draw.
Alekseev-Ivanchuk and Jakovenko-Mamedyarov looked balanced and ended in relatively early draws. In a tense position as black against Leko, Shirov sacked his bishop on d4 for 2 pawn and some initiative. It looked quite reasonable for black but he must have missed the best continuation somewhere. After exchanging queens, Leko could quickly exchange more material to reach a won end-game. 1-0.
Leko is off to a great start, leading the tournament and playing white again tomorrow.
Tomorrow Magnus has white against Alekseev. Their 3 previous encounters in classical chess has ended in draw although Magnus was fairly close to winning in Dortmund in June.
Henrik Carlsen
Moscow, November 10th
Comments:
Posted by: groupoid
Great result.
But I wish Magnus could use his time to build up a position sometimes
But I wish Magnus could use his time to build up a position sometimes
Posted by: Piti
very impressive
Posted by: andy
Strålende innsats i Tal Memorial!
Flott spill mot Kramnik i første runde.
Flott spill mot Kramnik i første runde.
Trackback
Trackback-URL for this entry:
http://app.blogg.no/trackback/ping/5579846
http://app.blogg.no/trackback/ping/5579846
