Ivanchuk wins on second day World Cup finals
(FULL REPORT) The second game of the World Cup final between Alexander Grischuk and Peter Svidler ended in a rather quick draw on Saturday. In the match for 3rd and 4th place, Vassily Ivanchuk took the lead; he beat Ruslan Ponomariov with the black pieces.
General infoThe 2011 FIDE World Cup is a 128-player knock-out taking place August 27-September 20 in Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia. The tournament delivers three participants for the next Candidates tournament/matches, as part of the new World Championship cycle. Except for the final, all rounds have 2-game matches at the FIDE time control: 90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes to finish the game, with a 30-second increment from the first move. In case of a 1-1 tie, on the third day of the round there's a tie-break with rapid games and if necessary blitz games and an Armageddon. More info here. |  |
Finals, day 2
Asked about his unsuccessful FIDE World Championship match against the same opponent in January 2002, Ivanchuk replied:
I do not recall on the events that took place such a long time ago.
So maybe the Ukrainian doesn't feel think about it that way, but he does have a good chance to take revenge for his loss back then. On Saturday Ivanchuk took the lead in his mini-match, winning a strange game with the black pieces.
Strange, because Ponomariov did something quite risky in the opening: he went for a speculative knight sacrifice, maybe on intuition, who knows. Where Grischuk had played 13.h4 against Kramnik, last month at the Russian Championship, Ponomariov went for 13.Nxe6. This move has been played a few times, but scores very badly for White. And when Ivanchuk quickly played the well-known theoretical reply, Ponomariov started thinking!
Ponomariov looks disturbed after 13.Nxe6?! Qe5!
The complications led to an ending that was clearly better for Black, but for a long time Ponomariov was hanging on. Ivanchuk:
Frankly speaking when I captured with my Rook on f2, Ruslan managed to arrange his pieces and it seemed to me that he had enough compensation for a pawn. However, in the mutual time-trouble he made a rough mistake and the blow on g2 was decisive.
Just before the time control, in a difficult position, he blundered and the game was decided immediately.
Ivanchuk is one game point away from the next FIDE Candidates event.
There's not much to say about the game between Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk. Against Grischuk's Najdorf, of the many moves possible at move six Svidler chose 6.a4, according to Grischuk
the most boring and reliable.
The game confirmed this: after fifteen known moves and three new half moves, the position was equal and the point was split. Svidler:
As I said yesterday, most of my White games are drawn. I decided not to deviate from this successful recipe! (...) After my move 12.Qe2 that might be considered as a novelty, we got a practically forced position where we agreed for a draw. Black will double on the c-file, White on the d-file and neither one of them can really do anything. In general, it was rather logical that the game was drawn there, because there is really no serious plan. (...) It is clear that one could have played in a more ambitious way but once again — this is not the first White game in this tournament where I do not manage anything from the opening.
Grischuk added:
Today Peter proved once again that he is a man of his word. Like Alexander Kerzhakov who used to say: "I kicked, I am kicking and I will keep kicking!", Peter is saying: "With White I drew, I draw and I will draw!"
Two friends in a good mood: Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk
Games finals, day 2
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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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