Mamedyarov Leads Tal Memorial Rapid Chess After Day 1
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov leads the Tal Memorial in Moscow after three rounds. The Azerbaijani grandmaster is on 2.5/3 with six rapid rounds to go, and then a final day of blitz.
The Tal Memorial has returned to the calendar, albeit in a different form. To give participants of the Candidates' Tournament a chance to warm up without getting too tired, the format is three days of rapid chess and one day of blitz.
The tournament continues an old tradition that was revived in 2012 to hold Russian top tournaments in museums. This Tal Memorial is taking place in the Museum of Russian Impressionism, a leading private museum on Leningradsky Avenue, 4.5 km northwest of Red Square. The games are indeed played with paintings as backdrops.
Chess, once again, in the middle of a museum. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
This 11th edition of the Tal Memorial has a total prize fund of $150,000. It started today with a 10-player single round robin of rapid chess (25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment). Three rounds are played on Friday, Saturday and Sunday March 2-4.
The players are GMs Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler, Sergey Karjakin, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Daniil Dubov (all from Russia), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Viswanathan Anand (India), and Boris Gelfand (Israel).
Four of these players are also in the Candidates': Kramnik, Grischuk, Karjakin and Mamedyarov.
Anand, Svidler, Grischuk and Karjakin having a chat during the opening ceremony. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
For the blitz, on Monday, March 5, four more players will be added: GMs Vladislav Artemiev, Dmitry Andreikin, Vladimir Fedoseev and Alexander Morozevich. That will also be a single round robin, of 13 rounds, with a time control of 5 minutes and 3 seconds increment. That tournament will take place in the Central Chess Club in Moscow on Gogolevsky Boulevard.
The reigning world rapid champion Anand drew first blood as he won his white game against Dubov.
Anand had a good start of 2/2 today. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Nakamura won a nice endgame against Gelfand after the game had started rather sharply. This Anti-Moscow used to be quite fashionable, but we don't get to see it much anymore. The commentator Morozevich, who joined GM Evgeny Miroshnichenko in the studio today, suggested an interesting middlegame plan.
Sweet endgame technique by Nakamura in his game with Gelfand. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Nakamura couldn't keep it up, as he lost his very next encounter to Dubov—this was definitely the game of the day, especially if we take into account that we are remembering the eighth world champion in this tournament!
Sacrificing not one or two, but three pawns in the opening (a Mikenas English), and doing it without much thinking, the young Russian revealed he had prepared this plan.
Dubov won in Tal style, or was it more like Adolf Anderssen? | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Anand was the only player to reach 2/2 but this time his win wasn't so convincing. Hanging on to the material was good, but somehow he got confused when Nepomniachtchi walked his king all the way to c6. The Russian player lost as he erred in a drawn rook endgame.
A big mistake in the rook endgame by Nepomniachtchi. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
In round three, Nakamura bounced back strongly in his game with Nepomniachtchi—always a bit of a grudge match since the incident between the players at the 2015 FIDE World Cup.
White's calm e3 vs the King's Indian turned into a Benoni type of game where "Nepo" missed a few tactical ideas and then got into a horrible position.
Anand suffered his first loss to Mamedyarov, who thus took over the lead as the only player on 2.5 points. Commentators "Moro" and "Miro" were puzzled by the Indian GM's play, and didn't like that he allowed his bishop to be traded for the knight (and even less that he started to lose pawn after pawn!).
2018 Tal Memorial Rapid | Round 3 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Mamedyarov,Shakhriyar | 2755 | 3069 | 1 | ½ | 1 | 2.5/3 | |||||||||
| 2 | Grischuk,Alexander | 2792 | 2841 | ½ | 1 | ½ | 2.0/3 | 2.75 | ||||||||
| 3 | Anand,Viswanathan | 2805 | 2860 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.0/3 | 2 | ||||||||
| 4 | Nakamura,Hikaru | 2820 | 2823 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.0/3 | 1.5 | ||||||||
| 5 | Dubov,Daniil | 2663 | 2783 | 0 | 1 | ½ | 1.5/3 | 2.75 | ||||||||
| 6 | Karjakin,Sergey | 2724 | 2700 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1.5/3 | 2.25 | ||||||||
| 7 | Kramnik,Vladimir | 2795 | 2773 | ½ | 0 | 1 | 1.5/3 | 1.75 | ||||||||
| 8 | Gelfand,Boris | 2644 | 2658 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1.0/3 | |||||||||
| 9 | Nepomniachtchi,Ian | 2803 | 2519 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0.5/3 | 0.25 | ||||||||
| 10 | Svidler,Peter | 2770 | 2505 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0.5/3 | 0.25 |
Rounds 4-6 will be played tomorrow, and rounds 7-9 on Sunday. Then, on Monday, 13 rounds of blitz will follow.
The players' lot numbers were on the back of postcards. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Kramnik picks what turns out to be lot number 10. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
A small orchestra provided further entertainment at the opening. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Chess right next to art! | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Hikaru Nakamura and his second Kris Littlejohn. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
GM Sergey Shipov giving commentary in Russian. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
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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