Ivanchuk beats Morozevich 2¬?-1¬? (VIDEO)
Vassily Ivanchuk will play the final of the Le??n rapid tournament on Sunday. Yesterday he qualified by beating Morozevich 2.5-1.5 where a win in the first game turned out to be enough. Video added.ChessVibes brings on-the-spot coverage of the XXII Magistral de Ajedrez Ciudad de Le??n. The rapid knockout takes place June 4th to 7th and has Magnus Carlsen, Alexander Morozevich, Vassily Ivanchuk and Wang Yue playing.One semi-final is played on Friday (Ivanchuk-Morozevich), one on Saturday (Carlsen-Wang Yue) and the final on Sunday. Each match contains four rapid games with twenty minutes on the clock, plus ten seconds increment each move.Video Ivanchuk-Morozevich
Yesterday Ivanchuk immediately took the lead in game 1, where he outplayed Morozevich beautifully in an ending reached from a Ragozin. Black was already lost when he allowed the pretty finish, since running with the a-pawn would allow Nb4.But then it was Morozevich' turn to show some nice manoeuvring in an ending - this game had started as a 4.Qc2 Nimzo. White had total domination at move 27 and... then he just couldn't convert it. 28.Nc4 might have been an improvement since although White's control over the 7th rank still looked menacing, Black had had the worst at move 31. Soon it was Morozevich who had to be careful, but he was, and held the draw.
Game 3 was an extremely interesting draw where White probably missed one or two possibilities to get more than half a point, and then the 4th game was a bit of an anti-climax. In a must-win situation, right after the opening Morozevich allowed a bishop sacrifice with which Ivanchuk could force a draw immediately.At the moment I'm still working on a video of the first semi-final but hopefully I can post it soon. In the meantime, in a bit more than half an hour from now the next semi-final between Carlsen and Wang Yue will start!Earlier today an interesting meeting with Ivanchuk was organized. The subject being his life and career, the Ukrainian answered many questions from Miguel Illescas, Leontxo Garcia and the spectators and shared several nice anecdotes. I'll try to post some quotes and photos soon as well.For now, yesterday's games, which some of you might have found already in the right column at the "Recent games for replay" section.Game viewer
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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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