Corus R11: four share the lead; Giri grandmaster at 14
The Corus Chess Tournament awaits an exciting weekend with no less than four players sharing the lead after eleven rounds: Aronian, Dominguez, Movsesian and Radjabov. In the C Group, 14-year-old Anish Giri achieved his 3rd GM norm and with a rating easily over 2500, he can be called a grandmaster as from today.Naturally Dominguez-Aronian was a key game in today's round. Dominguez showed excellent preparation in the 8.d4 gambit line that avoids the Marshall Gambit (not opting for the Berlin Wall, Aronian was clearly happy with a draw today). The Cuban GM thought 13.Bd5 to be a novelty, but actually 14...Be6 was the first new move. Aronian needed lots of thinking from that moment on, and could have tried 19...c5!? 20.Be5 Bxe5 21.Rxe5 Bxg2 although Dominguez felt it to be better for White too. An important moment was move 25 were Re8-e5 is probably an improvement; in the game White's knight got back into play immediately and this was decisive. Dominguez explained the game in today's press conference which will be posted later.
Wang Yue looked a bit tired before the start of the game, and indeed during the decisive phase he seemed to be missing some important tactics. His 15.Bg4 was new and positionally motivated. A few moves later he was about to get the famous grand knight on e4 versus the silly g7 bishop, but Radjabov was in time to sacrifice a pawn and open the long diagonal. In timetrouble, the Chinese played a few inaccurate moves and after the time control the ending was already difficult for him.In an English game with a typical reversed-Closed Sicilian structure, Van Wely got a promising position but couldn't do much with it. In a very complicated middlegame the chances were probably about even but the ending already looked unpleasant. Movsesian first missed 37...g3! but ater 39.Ne5? he got a second chance.
The fourth winner in the A group was Kamsky - the American shattered Karjakin's hopes in a reversed Slav. "I wanted to go for something off-beat, because the guy is absolutely brutally prepared in the opening,", Kamsky explained his first few moves. (Now we're really curious what he will come up with against Topalov!) Karjakin probably missed that 14...Ng4 is answered by 15.Qb3! which is very annoying. After that "every tempo was very important," Kamsky continued, "After 16.b5 White has a comfortable advantage and 17...b6 was probably the crucial mistake as it opens the diagonal, after which Black couldn't hold the center anymore."The other three games were draws of which Morozevich-Carlsen was the most interesting. In the end it looked like some kind of psychological fight. ("So you thought you were going to give perpetual today, right? Well, you're not - I am!")And so it's Aronian, Dominguez, Movsesian and Radjabov in the lead. Tomorrow it's Movsesian-Radjabov while Aronian faces Morozevich with White and Dominguez has to take on Ivanchuk with the black pieces. On Sunday, Movsesian plays Kamsky and it's Dominguez versus Karjakin while Aronian and Radjabov meet Dutchies Smeets and Stellwagen respectively.
Many decisive games also in the B group today but Nigel Short again managed to retain his half-a-point lead. He beat one of his closest rivals, Navara, but still has Caruana and Kasimdzhanov chasing him. Tomorrow Short has White against Efimenko and in the last round it's all or nothing with Black against Caruana.In the C group, Hillarp Persson lost his game against Bitalzadeh, and with it his lead in the standings. So is now half a point clear after beating Bosboom. And guess who are playing each other tomorrow in the penultimate round: it's Hillarp Persson-So!But let's not forget what was arguably the biggest story of today: Anish Giri beat Eduardo Iturrizaga and in doing so, he scored his third grandmaster norm in less than a year! His virtual rating is 2528 so as from today Giri can be called a grandmaster! At 14 years, 7 months and 2 days, he's the 12th youngest grandmaster in history:No. |
Player | Nat. |
years |
months |
days |
year |
1 |
Sergey Karjakin | UKR
| 12
| 7
| 0
| 2002
|
2 |
Parimarjan Negi | IND |
13 |
3 |
22 |
2006 |
3 |
Magnus Carlsen | NOR
| 13
| 3
| 27
| 2004
|
4 |
Bu Xiangzhi | CHN |
13 |
10 |
13 |
1999 |
5 |
Teimour Radjabov | AZE |
14 |
0 |
14 |
2001 |
6 |
Ruslan Ponomaryov | UKR |
14 | 0 |
17 |
1997 |
7 |
Wesley So | PHI |
14 |
1 |
28 |
2007 |
8 |
Etienne Bacrot | FRA |
14 |
2 |
0 | 1997 |
9 |
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | FRA |
14 | 4 |
0 |
2005 |
10 |
Peter Leko | HUN |
14 |
4 |
22 |
1994 |
11 |
Hou Yifan | CHN | 14
| 6
| 2 | 2008
|
12 |
Anish Giri | RUS
| 14
| 7
| 2
| 2009
|
13 |
Yuri Kuzubov | UKR
| 14
| 7
| 12
| 2004
|
14 |
Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son | VIE |
14 | 10 |
0 |
2004 |
15 |
Fabiano Caruana | ITA |
14 |
11 |
20 |
2007 |
16 |
Koneru Humpy | IND |
15 |
1 |
27 | 2002 |
17 |
Hikaru Nakamura | USA |
15 | 2 |
19 |
2003 |
18 |
Pentala Harikrishna | IND |
15 |
3 |
5 |
2001 |
19 |
Judit Polgar | HUN |
15 |
4 |
28 | 1991 |
20 |
Alejandro Ramirez | CRI |
15 | 5 |
14 |
2003 |
21 |
Bobby Fischer | USA |
15 |
6 |
1 |
1958 |
Here are all of today's games for replay:
GM Group A | GM Group B | |
GM Group C | ||
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Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A
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Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B
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Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C
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- Tournament website
- Games in PGN: Group A, Group B and Group C
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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