Jermuk R11: Inarkiev wins again, Cheparinov loses again
After beating Dmitry Jakovenko in a spectacular game, Ernesto Inarkiev said goodbye to his last place in the standings today. That spot is now taken by Ivan Cheparinov, who lost again, this time to Eljanov.The 5th tournament in the FIDE Grand Prix Series takes place in Jermuk, Armenia. It's a 14-player round-robin with Aronian, Jakovenko, Leko, Gelfand, Bacrot, Kamsky, Karjakin, Eljanov, Alekseev, Akopian, Ivanchuk, Cheparinov, Inarkiev and Kasimdzhanov. More info on the GP and Jermuk in our preview.Round 11
Do we need to start worrying about Ivan Cheparinov's health? The tournament website doesn't mention anything, and Ivan doesn't look ill at all on the photos, so we're probably just dealing with a terrible lack of form. After a good start the Bulgarian scored half a point out of the last seven games but just like Inarkiev, he never goes down without a good fight. Yesterday's game against Eljanov was a spectacular King's Indian in which the Ukrainian went for the rare but interesting sideline 11.g4, followed by Rf1-f2-g2. Don't miss that amazing rook sacrifice on g5 to which Cheparinov had to reply by giving up his queen, which in the end was not enough to hold everything together.
In a similar pawn structure, Jakovenko also tried a g2-g4 against Inarkiev's Breyer/Zaitsev hybrid. Things spiced up even more when Inarkiev started to march his king back to the centre (and eventually all the way to b8) and his courage paid off once again!The game between the co-leaders Kasimdzhanov and Leko was theoretically relevant; the Hungarian's 20...Qd6 was a deviation from Aronian's 20...Qc5 with which the Armenian top GM eventually lost to Kasim. The subsequent queen sacrifice which led to a perpetual must have been on both players' boards before - or should we say computer screens?
Levon Aronian, who had beaten his compatriot Vladimir Akopian in Nalchik, came very close to doing the same in Jermuk and thereby joining the leaders at the top of the standings. However, on move 31 he blundered the win (31...Ne5! 32.Kf2 Nxf3! is curtains).
Round 11 games
Game viewer by ChessTempoJermuk Grand Prix 2009 | Round 11 Standings
Jermuk Grand Prix 2009 | Schedule & results
Links
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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