Hamburg Grand Prix: Nepomniachtchi Out, Clashes With Organizer
Pentala Harikrishna, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wei Yi were all eliminated in the first round of the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg. These players lost their first game and then failed to win on demand. Nepomniachtchi later had a clash on Twitter with the organizer.
Nepomniachtchi won the first Grand Prix in Moscow. He didn't play in Riga, and before Hamburg he was in third place in the overall standings with nine GP points, behind Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexander Grischuk, who both have 10.
Vachier-Lagrave is virtually on 10 points as well now, after reaching round two in Hamburg. Nepomniachtchi, however, got eliminated by Jan-Krzysztof Duda and so the Russian grandmaster needs to do well in Jerusalem next month to keep hopes of qualifying for the world championship candidates.
After blundering that important central pawn in the first game, the next day Nepomniachtchi tried for 132 moves before he had to stop his winning attempts. Not for the first time, Duda chose a surprising opening (the Accelerated Dragon) in a situation where he only needed a draw, but this time he defended a worse endgame successfully.
If Nepomniachtchi's disappointment didn't speak from the many moves in the rook endgame, it surely did from his tweet after the game.
Hamburg Grand Prix organisation recipe from @theworldchess : choose the most expensive and nice hotel and the most cheap and unsuitable playing venue. At least I rejoice I shouldn't go there anymore. Good luck to remaining players
— Yan Nepomniachtchi (@lachesisq) November 6, 2019#GrandPrixFIDE #chess
Asked if he wanted to explain what was wrong with the playing hall, Nepomniachtchi declined to comment.
Organizer Ilya Merenzon of World Chess responded in a way that only added fuel to Nepomniachtchi's fire:
Fortunately, I'm not your bro, Mr. Golden Standard of pathetic organisation. You should be put to the weights and measures department.
— Yan Nepomniachtchi (@lachesisq) November 6, 2019
Vachier-Lagrave reached the second round as he held Wei to a draw with the black pieces, in the second Najdorf of their mini-match. As expected, Wei tried a much sharper approach but MVL countered well.
"So far the preparation before the tournament pays off," said Vachier-Lagrave.
In what is not a great year for Nakamura, the American GM couldn't follow up on his good tournament in Isle of Man. In a must-win situation, he tried the Queen's Gambit Accepted, but had to agree to a draw in a position where he was a pawn down:
Dmitry Jakovenko dodged a bullet against Yu Yangyi, who reached a tablebase win in a knight endgame but failed to convert.
"It was a miracle, and it took several mistakes from my opponent to save the game," said Jakovenko.
The other games can be found in the game viewer below. Svidler holding Harikrishna to a draw meant that the Russian GM is through to the next round as well.
On Thursday we'll see tiebreaks for the matches Vitiugov-Navara, Grischuk-Wojtaszek, Dubov-Radjabov and Yu-Jakovenko.
The Hamburg Grand Prix games start each day at 15:00 CET, which is 9 a.m. Eastern and 6 a.m. Pacific. You can follow them here as part of our live portal.
All games from day 2
Previous report:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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