6Th London Chess Classic (6-14 December 2014)
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6TH LONDON CHESS CLASSIC (6-14 DECEMBER 2014) SUPER RAPIDPLAY OPEN (ROUNDS 9-10) - 7 DECEMBER 2014 Hikaru Nakamura of the USA won the London Super Rapidplay Open with an outstanding score of 9½/10, having conceded just the one draw in the sixth round to Matthew Sadler. Second on his own, a full point behind Nakamura on 8½, was Anish Giri of the Netherlands. Ten players shared third place on 8 points: Fabiano Caruana (Italy), Vishy Anand (India), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Nigel Short, Nick Pert and Simon Williams (all England), Alex Lenderman and Daniel Naroditsky (both USA), Eric Hansen (Canada), and Alon Greenfeld (Israel). It was a remarkable event, and needed a remarkable winner. It got one: on the Sunday Hikaru was close to unplayable, with a powerful 4/4 finish including the scalps of four of his elite London Chess Classic rivals (note in all diaries: the Classic starts Wednesday). Mickey Adams, Anish Giri, Fabiano Caruana and Vishy Anand all lowered their colours before Hikaru. Only Vladimir Kramnik escaped him, if only because he didn’t play him – although he did last year. Cast your mind back a year and you will recall that Vlad was Hikaru’s swindle victim in the semi-final of the 2013 London Classic Super 16. Hikaru went on to defeat Boris Gelfand in the final, so this is his second successive victory in this format of the game. Hikaru’s runaway rapidplay has added spice to this year’s Classic: you can be sure that all five of his rivals will be out for revenge. With his two London triumphs, Hikaru unofficially joins a select band of super-GMs for whom the UK capital has proved a fertile ground for repeated successes and who perhaps deserve the title ‘London master’. Garry Kasparov can look back on one and a half world title matches won here (whilst no doubt trying to forget that it was also here that he ultimately relinquished his title); Vlad Kramnik has his victory over Garry here, plus a London Classic success; and it was in London that Magnus Carlsen became world number one, qualified for a world title and won three Classic titles. And those of us with longish memories will remember the young and largely unknown IM who came, saw and conquered at the final Lloyds Bank Masters in 1994. That was Alexander Morozevich and his score, in a spooky parallel with 2014, was 9½/10. Let’s step back a minute and take a look at some stats. The PGN file of games played on the top ten boards, 100 in all, shows that only 17 of these top-end encounters ended in draws. 83% decisive games is enough to make any tournament organiser or armchair spectator salivate. The titled player count shows that 34 GMs, 40 IMs and 30 with lower titles, took part, from 48 different countries, with 266 from England, followed by 16 from France and 14 from Norway. 405 players took part in total: 821 white wins, 234 draws and 757 black wins, making 1,812 in all and 87% decisive games. To the play: the overnight leaders were Sadler, Nakamura, Caruana, Howell, Giri and Kramnik. In round six the top board game between Sadler and Nakamura was drawn. The English GM had two extra pawns at one juncture but he failed to consolidate his advantage and allowed some resourceful counterplay. David Howell tried erecting a Berlin Wall to keep out Fabiano Caruana but the Italian-American super-GM used an exchange sacrifice to undermine its foundations. It may not have been fatal but for Howell’s perennial enemy, the clock. A more celebrated Berlin Wall builder was on the next board, but he was facing a much weirder edifice, put up by an avant-garde Dutch architect for a niche market... (a niche market – see what I did there? Oh, please yourselves). Round 6 A.Giri - V.Kramnik 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.h3 Unusual but not yet entirely off the radar. 4...Bb4 5.Bd3!? What on earth...? Now we really are in uncharted territory. Parking your bishop in a space usually reserved for the d -pawn in open games usually leads to positional chaos and a lot of other larger vehicles stuck honking their horns to be let out. Of course, such sallies become more playable in rapidplay chess as the opponent has zero time in which to conduct a serious opening appraisal. The database tells me it has been played by three unknowns called Svensk, Muller and Rewers. So should we call it the Svensk -Muller -Rewers variation (and are there any other triple -barrelled opening names)? Or perhaps Giri ’s Folly? Well, maybe not the latter because he used it three times in this tournament to score 2½/3 against Kramnik, Caruana and Adams. Not a score to be sneezed at. 5...0-0 5...d6 6.a3 Ba5 7.b4 Bb6 8.Na4 0-0 9.0-0 d5 10.exd5 Qxd5 11.Re1 Bd4 12.Nxd4 exd4 13.Bf1 Bf5 14.d3 a5 15.Bf4 axb4 16.axb4 b5? 17.Nc5 gave White a bit of initiative in Giri -Adams, round 9, but 16...Qb5!? looks better for Black. 6.0-0 d6 7.a3 In round seven, perhaps fearing an improvement developed in the 20-minute break between rounds, Giri varied with 7.Re1 Ne7 8.Ne2 d5 9.Ng3 dxe4 10.Nxe4 Ng6 11.Nxf6+ Qxf6 12.c3 Bd6 13.Be4 and drew in a fairly sedate 29 moves against Caruana. 7...Bxc3 To my rheumy eye, it looks slightly odd to unblock the c 1-h6 diagonal. Houdini also prefers to leave the Denver clamp in place and retreat the bishop to a5 or c5. 8.dxc3 Now it ’s just equal and, if truth be told, a bit boring. I’ll wake you up when it gets interesting again. 8...Ne7 9.a4 h6 10.a5 Ng6 11.c4 Be6 12.Be3 Nd7 13.b4 Nf4 14.Re1 Qf6 15.Bf1 g5 15...Qg6, more or less forcing 16.Bxf4 exf4, feels more natural for Black. 16.Kh2 Kh8 17.g3 17...Nxh3? If any other player had played this, one would diagnose ‘rush of blood ’ to the head but the former world champion is almost immune from such afflictions. 17...Ng6 is OK, but perhaps it was a case of ‘having played A (...g5), you have to play B ’. 18.Bxh3 g4 19.Bg2 gxf3 20.Bxf3 Bxc4 OK, Black has won a pawn but take a look at the h6-pawn. It doesn ’t look long for this world, does it? 21.Kg2 Kg7 22.Rh1 Rh8 23.Rh4 Houdini prefers 23.Rh5!?, to stop the h6-pawn being jettisoned on h5 and to fix the target square as h6, suitably backed up with Qd2 and Rah1. 23...Nf8? Separating the rooks and making it hard for the a8-rook to join in the defence of the kingside. 23...h5! 24.Qd2 Qe6 25.Rah1 Nf6 26.Bxh5 minimises White ’s edge after 26...Nxh5 27.Rxh5 Rxh5 28.Rxh5 Rh8 29.Rxh8 Kxh8 30.Bxa7 d5, etc. 24.Qd2 Ne6 25.Qc3! I wonder if Kramnik missed this. It looks like Ng5 is the key to the black defence, blocking the bishop attack on h6, but this subtle intermezzo ties the knight to the defence of the c7-pawn. 25...Bb5 26.Rah1 Kf8 27.Bg4! Much better than simply capturing on h6. White ramps up the pressure against c7. It must have been galling for Black to see this bishop, once ludicrously placed on d3, now playing such a key role in the attack. 27...Bc6 27...h5 is now the best of a bad job, but 28.Rxh5 Rxh5 29.Rxh5 Rc8 30.Bxa7 is pretty hopeless. 28.Bxe6 Qxe6 29.b5! Bxb5 30.Rxh6 Rxh6 31.Rxh6 Attacking the queen and threatening a deadly skewer of the rook via h8. There is no defence. 31...Qg4 32.f3 An unnecessary precaution as there is no perpetual after 32.Rh8+ Kg7 33.Rxa8 Qxe4+ 34.f3, etc. But the text wins anyway. 32...Qg7 33.Qxc7 a6 34.Qxd6+ Kg8 35.Rh5 1-0 There was a game for nostalgia addicts on board seven, with Short and Speelman reprising their Candidates’ rivalry of the 1980s/90s. End to end stuff, as soccer commentators like to say, but finally ending in a draw. Round seven, and we already know that Giri and Caruana drew, thus bringing to an end each other’s 100% score. Nakamura and McShane caught up with them, beating Adams and Agdestein respectively. Mickey loosened his position around moves 18-23 and Hikaru took full advantage. Luke seemed to make steady progress to victory against Simen but perhaps the Norwegian GM could have found a perpetual check had he more time. Actually, the game contained another sweet little tactical point which only a GM with plenty of time on his clock (or a computer with a couple of nano-seconds to spare) could find. I’ll set it as a puzzle. As is standard at the London Classic, spectators will of course be able to enjoy the action on the official website. Round 8: Nakamura-Giri was a long, featureless, manoeuvring game until beyond move 70, with White still having around 4 minutes left to Black’s 3½ minutes. But then a small error, 74...h5?, allowed Hikaru to win the d-pawn. Anish probably thought he could have won Hikaru’s f-pawn but he must have realised then that it would have left his king in a mating net.