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Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2014 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2014 Monday 27 January - Friday 6 February 2014 Round 5 Report: 2 February by John Saunders In round five of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters, played on 2 February at the Caleta Hotel, the number of leaders expanded from three to eight as the overnight leaders were unable to maintain their maximum scores. The eight overnight leaders are Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Pentala Harikrishna (India), Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Maxim Rodshtein (Israel), Nikita Vitiugov (Russia), Paco Vallejo Pons (Spain), Li Chao (China) and Richard Rapport (Hungary). In the race for the top women's prize, the current leader is now Tan Zhongyi on 4/5. The top board game Li Chao-Rodshtein opened with an Exchange Slav which, as anyone who has tuned into our commentaries will know, is disapproved by Simon Williams. I tend to agree with him, even though it is rather hypocritical on my part as my own rather pitiful attempts to play chess include even more pusillanimous openings. Anyway, the game was indeed drawn, though not without a decent fight. On board two, the game between Vachier-Lagrave and Mareco started with the Taimanov Sicilian and was an altogether more vigorous affair. The game hinged round a remarkable piece sacrifice by the Frenchman on move 15, barely out of the opening. There was no instant tactical finish but it was evident that Black's king could never find safety no matter how ingenious the defence (and Mareco did well to find most of the 'engine moves'). This game makes a great impression – would it be too effusive to describe as it a sort of post-modern and infinitely more sophisticated Morphy v D of B game? Well, I was impressed anyway. See what you think. Gibraltar Masters 2014, Round 5 M.Vachier-Lagrave (2745) - S.Mareco (2582) 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be2 Nf6 7.Be3 Be7 8.f4 d6 9.Ndb5 Slightly offbeat. 9.Qd2, 10.0-0-0 and 9.g4 are fairly standard moves here. 9...Qb8 10.g4 Nd7 Hamdouchi-An.Sokolov, in the 2013 French Championship, continued 10...a6 11.Nd4 e5 12.Nb3 and now Black was able to free his game with 12...d5! which works out roughly equal. Black in fact won the game. Perhaps White should improve with 12.Nf5!?. 11.h4 a6 12.Nd4 Qc7 13.g5 Na5 14.h5 At this point we're back in the book as the position converges with some games from the 1980s where the players hadn't played Ndb5/Nd4 and Qb8/c7. Back in the day, White had opted for 14.Nb3 in this position. 14...b5 Now White goes right out on a limb. 15.Nf5! exf5 16.Nd5 Qc6 Where to put the queen? Even the normally decisive silicon friend seems to be unsure, selecting each of four queen moves as its favourite depending on how long it is given to think. 16...Qb7 struck me as the most logical but I find it hard to articulate why. 17.exf5 It is not entirely obvious why White has given up a piece as there is no instant knock-out blow anywhere on the board. The clue is to look at Black's king and ask yourself where it is going to find safety. Not castled kingside, as the cluster of four white kingside pawns will be used like a tin opener to expose the king to fire from heavy pieces. Not on e8 as the e-file is open to rook/queen attack. There is no easy answer, in fact, and that is the key to White's long-lasting initiative. 17...Nc4 18.Bf3 Nxe3 19.Nxe3 Qc5 20.Qd2 Black has found a clever way to sidestep the immediate danger. If 20.Bxa8? Qxe3+ Black will fairly obviously win. 20...Rb8 21.b4 Qa7 Here the ingenious Hiarcs finds a clever way to give the piece back and gain an initiative for Black: 21...Ne5! 22.fxe5 (22.Bd5 Qa7 23.fxe5 Bxg5! is also good for Black.) 22...Qxe5, threatening the rook on a1 and the g5 pawn. Best for White seems to be 22.Bd5 Qa7 and then not capture the knight, maintaining his attack, but Black has gained from getting his knight in play. 22.0-0-0 Bb7 23.Bxb7 Rxb7 24.h6 g6 24...gxh6 25.Qc3 Rg8 26.Nd5 and the threats down the c and e-files will be decisive. 25.Nd5 Effective but again 25.Qc3 looks more lethal. 25...Nb6 26.Nxe7 Rxe7 27.Qc3 Rg8 28.Qc6+ Not the flashy 28.Qg7 as Black can play 28...Rf8 and the queen will be offside. 28...Kd8 29.Rxd6+ Nd7 30.f6! Re6 31.Rxe6 fxe6 32.Rd1! Qc7 33.Qxa6! 33.Qxe6? is considerably worse as it lets the black rook into play with 33...Re8 when the 'clever' 34.f7 loses to 34...Qxf4+ and 35...Rxe6. 33...Qxf4+ 34.Rd2 Qf1+ Black had made the best of his defence until here but now he should play 34...Qc7, although 35.Qxb5 Re8 36.c4 and White will win fairly easily. 35.Kb2 Qc4 36.Qd6 Qc7 37.f7 1-0 Vassily Ivanchuk beat Sergei Movsesian on board three but it was a case of 'Lucky Chucky' as he seemed to have much the worst of things at move 37 when Movsesian should have pursued his attack on the king rather than stopped to defend a queenside pawn with 38.Rd3. Ivanchuk didn't need a second invitation: he grabbed the initiative and exploited it with full vigour. This took him into a share of the lead. Nikita Vitiugov is clearly not going to surrender his Gibraltar Masters title without a fight. Last year commentator Simon Williams dubbed him 'the iceman' for his ability to conduct long grinds with an air of imperturbability, and this year we are seeing more of the same. In round five he came up against Kevin Spraggett after the latter had despatched Nigel Short in round four. An aside: I spoke to Kevin about the Short game yesterday as I was interested in his remarkable 10.e5 move (quick recap of the moves: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.0–0 Bd7 6.d4 b5 7.Bb3 exd4 8.c3 dxc3 9.Nxc3 Na5 – for a full annotation, see my round four report) and whether it was all prepared. Kevin said that he had prepared it on the morning of the game but that he had not looked any further than 10.e5 as he had not expected Nigel to play it. Back to Vitiugov-Spraggett: White gradually outplayed his opponent until they reached this position: Gibraltar Masters 2014, Round 5 Vitiugov - Spraggett Black to play Material is level – so what did Black do? He resigned. He can't defend the d6-pawn. If he exchanges queens with 45...Qxb6 46.Bxb6 and grovels in the corner with 46...Na8, White simply plays 47.Ba5 and then captures the b5-pawn next move and the a4-pawn not long after. Everything flows in White's favour and Black's position falls apart. So resignation was by no means premature. I wrote that "Black can't defend the d6-pawn." That's not strictly correct as he can play 45...Ke7 but there's a very powerful answer to that. Can you see it? I'll set it as a puzzle and put the answer at the end of the article. One remarkable thing about round five was the number of decisive games between the leading players. If you run your eye down the results, you'll notice that, of the top twenty games, only three ended in draws. I do wonder whether the influence of that young fellow who is currently playing in a tournament in Zurich has had an effect on chess style. He pushes for a win in every game, even in apparent dry and dusty endgames where you can't imagine anyone losing. I was reminded of this by Paco Vallejo Pons's game against Adhiban of India. White's winning chances seemed minimal when it came down to a level queen endgame but the Spanish GM kept plugging away until his opponent cracked. I'm not going to conduct an autopsy on this game but if I did, I would expect to find traces of Carlsenic poisoning. There was another Spain-India clash on the next board but this one went in favour of the Indian GM Pentala Harikrishna, who refuted Ivan Salgado's imaginative but apparently unsound piece sacrifice in the Scotch. Richard Rapport of Hungary caught the eye in Wijk aan Zee with some adventurous chess in the top group, although he subsided towards the end and shared last place with Naiditsch (a cruel thought crossed my mind that they might have had to share the wooden spoon when eating the traditional post-Wijk pea soup). He is clearly going to be popular with organisers who want their players to perform and entertain the spectators. In round five here he played what my software calls the 'Anglo-Dutch Defence' against the very strong French GM Romain Edouard. Gibraltar Masters 2014, Round 5 R.Edouard (2658) - R.Rapport (2691) 1.Nf3 e6 2.c4 f5 Richard Rapport explained that he had prepared this line for his girlfriend Jovana Vojinovic to play against Sandro Mareco, so this bit of homework came in handy. 3.g3 Nf6 4.Bg2 Be7 5.0-0 0-0 6.d3 d5 7.Qc2 Knight moves or 7.b3 are usually the order of the day here but this has been played a few times.
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