No Q-Final Place For Juniors
In the 2009 World Cup, the fourth round tie-breaks sorted the men from the boys - in some cases quite literally. Both remaining juniors, Wesley So (16, pictured) and Fabiano Caurana (17) were eliminated by their more experienced opposition (Malakhov and Gashimov respectively).
The gifted young Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is also still in his teens, but despite taking #1 seed Boris Gelfand all the way to blitz tie-breaks, he eventually conceded defeat. A brave effort!
Other players saying goodbye in the fourth round tiebreaks were Alexander Grischuk, who just lost out to Dmitry Jakovenko, and Etienne Bacrot who completed a bad day for France as he was eliminated by Ruslan Ponomariov.
The full scores from the fourth round are below. The scores of all the games can be found at this page from the official site. Some selected games are shown further below.
| NAT | G1 | G2 | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | B1 | B2 | Tot | |
| Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | FRA | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 3.5 |
| Gelfand, Boris | ISR | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 4.5 |
| Gashimov, Vugar | AZE | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | ½ | 3.5 | |||
| Caruana, Fabiano | ITA | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1.5 | |||
| Shirov, Alexei | ESP | 0 | ½ | 0.5 | ||||||
| Svidler, Peter | RUS | 1 | ½ | 1.5 | ||||||
| Laznicka, Viktor | CZE | 0 | ½ | 0.5 | ||||||
| Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | AZE | 1 | ½ | 1.5 | ||||||
| Karjakin, Sergey | UKR | ½ | 1 | 1.5 | ||||||
| Vitiugov, Nikita | RUS | ½ | 0 | 0.5 | ||||||
| So, Wesley | PHI | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 | |||
| Malakhov, Vladimir | RUS | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4.0 | |||
| Bacrot, Etienne | FRA | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 2.5 | ||
| Ponomariov, Ruslan | UKR | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 3.5 | ||
| Grischuk, Alexander | RUS | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | 3.0 |
| Jakovenko, Dmitry | RUS | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 5.0 |
That leaves us with a powerful quarter final line-up, all still in contention for the World Cup title, a place in the candidates stage of the next WCC cycle, and a cool $120,000.
The brackets for the remaining rounds can be found here.
