Aronian beats Ivanchuk, joins Bu

In a great game Levon Aronian defeated Vassily Ivanchuk in round 2 of the Pearl Spring tournament, to join Bu Xiangzhi in the lead. The Chinese drew comfortably with Topalov while Movsesian recoved from his first-round loss with a win against Svidler.

The 1st Pearl Spring Super GM Tournament takes place December 11- 21 in Nanjing, China. It's a six-player double round robin event with Veselin Topalov (BUL, 2791), Vassily Ivanchuk (UKR, 2786), Levon Aronian (ARM, 2757), Sergei Movsesian (SVK, 2732) Peter Svidler (RUS, 2727) and Bu Xiangzhi (CHN, 2714). Live games start daily at 15:00 local time which is early morning for Western countries (08:00 CET, 02:00 EST).

For the second time in a row Vassily Ivanchuk, who might need a few days to get acclimatized (he had arrived late in Nanjing and had to skip the opening ceremony), got into trouble. This time he couldn't save himself with the Black pieces in a highly complicated Accelarated Dragon against Levon Aronian. The Armenian played very strongly and outplayed his opponent tactically. The final attack was childplay for him.

Peter Svidler got punished for his creativity; an interesting exchange sacrifice didn't work out too well after what was probably an inaccurate follow-up. Movsesian showed no mercy afterwards. Topalov hasn't impressed too much yet; chosing the same variation as in his encounter with the same opponent last year in Bilbao, he had to admit that in this type of position Bu is as solid as a rock.

Annoted games of the second round:

[TABLE=526] [TABLE=527]



Photo: Wang Liang

Links:

• Tournament website
• Live games
• http://www.64ge.net/
• Gujuan Tzu's Chessnews Blog
• TWIC's games in PGN