Carlsen Falters, Ivanchuk Regains Lead at Amber

Submitted by SonofPearl on Sat, 03/20/2010 at 2:55pm.

Magnus Carlsen faltered in round seven at Amber, allowing Vassily Ivanchuk to regain the lead.

Carlsen lost to Vugar Gashimov in their blindfold game, and drew in the rapid game to lose 1.5-0.5. Meanwhile, Ivanchuk beat Alexander Grischuk in their rapid game to lead the overall standings by half a point from Carlsen.

Sergey Karjakin crushed Ruslan Ponomariov 2-0 to climb the leaderboard, joining Boris Gelfand in third place.

Vladimir Kramnik missed an opportunity to close on the leaders today. After an easy win against Lev Aronian in their blindfold game, he failed to convert a winning position in the rapid encounter, eventually losing to draw the match 1-1.

Ivanchuk on his way to victory against Grischuk (picture from the official site)

The full results in round 7:

Blind	Kramnik-Aronian	1-0
	Gelfand-Smeets	½-½
	Gashimov-Carlsen	1-0
Blind	Grischuk-Ivanchuk	½-½
	Dominguez-Svidler	½-½
	Ponomariov-Karjakin	0-1
Rapid	Aronian-Kramnik	1-0
	Smeets-Gelfand	0-1
	Carlsen-Gashimov	½-½
Rapid	Ivanchuk-Grischuk	1-0
	Svidler-Dominguez	1-0
	Karjakin-Ponomariov	1-0

The overall standings after seven rounds:

Ivanchuk, Vassily	UKR	10
Carlsen, Magnus	NOR	9.5
Gelfand, Boris	ISR	8.5
Karjakin, Sergey	UKR	8.5
Kramnik, Vladimir	RUS	8
Grischuk, Alexander	RUS	7.5
Svidler, Peter	RUS	7.5
Gashimov, Vugar	AZE	7
Aronian, Levon	ARM	6
Ponomariov, Ruslan	UKR	5.5
Smeets, Jan	NED	3.5
Dominguez Perez, Leinier	CUB	2.5

A selection of games from round 7 are below. All games are available at the official website.

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| 3368 reads | 15 comments |

2 votes:

Comments:

by mike_0072005 - 22 months ago
cebu city Philippines

Member Since: Jan 2010
Member Points: 17

all of them were playing in their best!!!!!!!!!!!!

by FM VPA - 22 months ago
Valsad-Gujarat India

Member Since: Jul 2007
Member Points: 1362

Indeed, some of the games were just wonderful & didactic!

by eXecute - 22 months ago
Washington DC, Hangar 18, Area 51, and Turkey

Member Since: Nov 2008
Member Points: 603

Wow what great games by Gashimov and Ivanchuk, I sure hope one of them wins by the end of this.

by Archaic71 - 22 months ago
Texas United States

Member Since: Nov 2008
Member Points: 853

Ok, so why is a picture of jpd303 tagged to this entry? Jess are you really secretly an internationally reknowned GM? I demand my rating points back you sneaky rascal!

by general_eagle - 22 months ago
New York United States

Member Since: Jan 2010
Member Points: 25

kramnik gave away the game at Nf2+

by _valentin_ - 22 months ago
Seattle, WA International

Member Since: Apr 2008
Member Points: 6457

The rapid game Carlsen-Gashimov is definitely worth watching too (it's not presented here, so see it on the official site).

It's notable for the ingenious combination that Carlsen used to avoid losing a piece in the middle game (moves 24-30), and then for the ease with which he drew a lost rook endgame (in which Gashimov made what looks like just one mistake, being tempted by temporary mating threats).