Grischuk Also Wins Blitz At World Mind Games

After winning the rapid, GM Alexander Grischuk also finished clear first at the World Mind Games blitz tournament.

GM Hou Yifan won the women's section.

The World Mind Games takes place December 11-17 in Beijing, China. It is a multi-sport event that includes five mind sports: bridge, chess, draughts, go and xiangqi (Chinese chess).

Photos © Gu Xiaobing courtesy of FIDE.

The blitz part of the Mind Games started a day after the rapid had finished. For both the men's and women's sections it was a double round robin, and so the players had to play no less than 30 games!

However, to make things rather comfortable, it was held on Saturday, Sunday and Monday with 10 rounds on each day. Besides, the time control was 3 minutes plus 2 seconds increment so the games didn't last very long.

As your reporter was facing a file with 480 games in total for this report (as always, easily downloadable at Mark Crowther's TWIC), hopefully you won't blame me for limiting myself to a few fragments.

First the men's tournament. Immediately we start with what was the move of the first round, and perhaps the move of the tournament:

Mamedyarov's 17.d4!? reminds of Anand's 23...b5 in the last match game in Sochi and curiously, in the December issue of The Master's Bulletin (just out!) IM Arthur van de Oudeweetering wrote an article with lots of examples of such pawn moves!

Then, a combination by Levon Aronian — not too difficult but still nice:

45-year-old Vassily Ivanchuk did well on the first day with a score of 7.0/10. Here's his win against Aronian:

Lots of spectators for Wang Yue and Nepomniachtchi. Photo Gu Xiaobing.

Crazy things can happen when both players are down to their last seconds:

Aronian won very quickly against Nepomniachtchi — especially his last three moves were very powerful:

The second day saw a remarkable opening blunder. Normal is 12.h3 Ne5 and then 13.Nf5 or 13.f3, but Leko accidentally changed the move order:

Tournament winner Grischuk had a bit of luck against Aronian:

This must have been one of runner-up Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's best games:

Teimour Radjabov finished last in the rapid tournament but did much better at the fast time control. He scored 1.5-0.5 against the winner:

2014 World Mind Games | Blitz, Final Standings

In the women's section Hou Yifan was in a class of her own.

After 30 rounds she topped the standings with 22.5 points, a full three points more than Valentina Gunina who had won the rapid tournament. Their first mutual encounter ended with a huge blunder:

Anna Ushenina should have drawn her black game, but things went wrong in the end:

2014 World Mind Games | Blitz (Women), Final Standings