Bilbao R4: two more draws
The standings at the Bilbao Masters Final remained unchanged after two more draws on Wednesday. Viswanathan Anand came close to beating Alexei Shirov in a sharp McCutcheon French, while Vladimir Kramnik had a small advantage with Black in an ending against Magnus Carlsen. Games with annotations and players' comments.Tournament info
The 3rd Masters Final takes place 9-15 October in Bilbao, Spain. Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Alexei Shirov play a double round-robin with a rate of play of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and another 60 minutes to finish the game, with 10 seconds increment from move 41. Again the so-called “Sofia rule” is enforced as well as the system of three points for each game won, 1 point for a draw and 0 for a loss. Each day the rounds will begin at 16:30 CET. More info here.Videos
iPhone/iPad users might want to watch the videos here.Round 4 report
Even though it's a short tournament, it will be remembered as a good one, and the special rules might well be the reason. Although the 90/40 rate before the first time control leads to more mistakes, it also makes every single game exciting. And although even with the Sofia rule the players can always draw if they both want to, we have the feeling it does lead to more fighting chess. The two draws on Wednesday were both very interesting. Anand should have beaten Shirov, almost for sure. "Perhaps I should have played positionally," he said after the game, "but I was looking for forced lines too much. If you miss one move, you get punished." The World Champion referred to a moment where he could put his queen and knight on black squares and then push the h-pawn. Still, in the game things went fine as well, if only he hadn't missed the 28...Qa4! after which Shirov could escape with a draw. After the game the Spaniard said: "It was a game that suits my style, yes, but as long as I'm in good shape, which is not the case in this tournament."
A much longer game was Carlsen-Kramnik - another English Opening, like at the London Chess Classic in 2009. Then Carlsen won a nice enounter, but this time Kramnik had no problems whatsoever; on the contrary. When 17.a5 wasn't followed by 18.a6 the Norwegian basically killed all his play on the queenside, and after another inaccuracy on move 36 he found himself in a slightly worse ending. But he defended well after that, so that even a player of Kramnik's caliber couldn't win it.
Games round 4
Game viewer by ChessTempo
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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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