Abdusattorov, Ju Score First Wins in Malmo
GMs Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Ju Wenjun both scored their first wins on Tuesday at the 2024 TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament. While Abdusattorov outplayed GM Nils Grandelius both on the board and the clock, the women's world champion defeated GM Vincent Keymer, who blundered a piece, fought back to a drawn position, but then lost after all.
The games GM Anton Korobov vs. GM Arjun Erigaisi and GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi vs GM Peter Svidler ended in draws. As a result, Arjun and Korobov are sharing the lead with three rounds to go.
Round five starts Wednesday, May 1, at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST / 6:30 p.m. IST.
TePe Sigeman Round 4 Results
TePe Sigeman Standings After Round 4
After a sub-par start to his tournament, Abdusattorov finally scored his first win today. He defeated Grandelius with very fast play, while the Swedish GM needed too much time in the opening phase, which would cost him later.
Grandelius explained this himself as he joined the live broadcast, a rare and very applaudable thing for players who have just lost a game. It shows the wonderful character of Sweden's number-one grandmaster, one with a cheerful attitude to life.
He felt that the critical moment in the game was after White's 19.Rfc1, when he had only half an hour left until move 40, while Abdusattorov had 40 minutes more than him left on his clock.
The position after 19.Rfc1.
The move 19...Nf6 (intending 20.a3 Ne4) would have led to tremendous complications, but there was not enough time to calculate them and Grandelius went for what he called the "lazy move" 19...exd4.
Soon after, Grandelius chose "the wrong plan" with 23...c6 and 24...Qb6, although the decisive mistake only came later, as GM Rafael Leitao shows:
After a tough start, the women's world champion is fully back into the tournament. She ended up beating Keymer, with the black pieces, after 69 moves and more than five hours of play. For a long time, the story of the game seemed about that one moment when the German GM miscalculated terribly. Can you see what was wrong with his move 27.Nc5?
After losing a full piece, Keymer fought admirably and, hours later, he actually managed to reach a drawn endgame. By then, he was more or less playing on increment, while Ju constantly kept a few minutes more on her clock. The endgame was both interesting and difficult, as Keymer's final, decisive mistake proved.
After a start of three losses, Maurizzi's ultra-solid approach in his game with Svidler was understandable. At some point, not losing becomes top priority, even if it means fairly unambitious play with the white pieces.
The French GM didn't expect his opponent to go for his regular, solid repertoire based on the Closed Ruy Lopez. Having in mind Svidler's work for GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu before and during the Candidates, he needed to take the games of the Indian prodigy into account as well while preparing for Svidler.
When the two players sat down for a joint post-mortem in front of the camera of the tournament's live broadcast, Maurizzi started by saying: "I was expecting maybe…" to which Svidler finished his sentence: "Some of Pragg's repertoire!?"
How it started How it's going pic.twitter.com/fDB6vYEsTc
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) April 30, 2024
But no, it was a quiet Closed Spanish and especially after 11.Bg5 Svidler felt it was hard to add more spice to the flavor. He said he tried to find ways to make the game more fun than it turned out to be, but chose what he thought were the best moves: "I think if I wanna have fun I will probably be worse."
As the game became slightly more tactical it also for Svidler became mostly a matter of not losing. "At some point I just told myself: OK, today is puzzle solving. I need to find all the best moves to equalize and I pay no attention to anything else."
At some point I just told myself: OK, today is puzzle solving. I need to find all the best moves to equalize and I pay no attention to anything else.
—Peter Svidler
That wasn't the most quiet game of the round. Korobov and Arjun seemed to be entering very interesting territory when the Indian GM took on h2 with his bishop, but his opponent responded with very healthy moves, soon won back the pawn soon, and a very drawish endgame appeared on the board already halfway through the game. Arjun could never really play for more, so the world number four spot in the live ratings was never in reach today – but there will be new rounds and new chances!
The live broadcast was hosted by GMs Laurent Fressinet and Stellan Brynell.
The Tepe Sigeman Chess Tournament takes place April 27-May 3, 2024, at the Elite Plaza Hotel in Malmo, Sweden. The players compete in an eight-player single round-robin. The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, with 30 more minutes for the rest of the game and a 30-second increment per move.
Previous coverage:
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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