Prague Chess Festival R2: Firouzja Defends Instructive Endgame
Alireza Firouzja defended an instructive opposite-colored bishop endgame to hold Nils Grandelius to a draw at the Prague Chess Festival. As David Anton missed a win, the second round of the Masters saw only draws.
You can follow the tournament here in our live portal. The tournament runs February 12-21 with a rest day on February 17. The rounds start at 15:00 CET which is 6 a.m. Pacific time. The last round starts an hour earlier.
The game that you'd expect to finish in a draw the quickest, ended up being the longest fight of the round.
Grandelius and Firouzja played the Berlin Ruy Lopez with the move 5.Re1, a line that is known to be very drawish at this high level. The Swedish grandmaster deserves credit for putting his young opponent under pressure with the white pieces anyway. After winning a pawn, his position was very promising.
Trading rooks was probably the wrong plan for White, after that Firouzja defended the remaining endgame perfectly and conceptually. It was all about the "wrong rook-pawn," as became clear in the final position. Instructive!
In the remaining games, it was David Anton who came the closest to a win, and one could argue that he deserved the win. His exchange sacrifice was excellent, but he could have improved upon his play in the technical phase:
Prague Masters | Round 2 Games
Prague Masters | Round 2 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | Ptds | SB |
| 1 | Duda, Jan-Krzysztof | 2755 | 2905 | ½ | 1 | 1.5/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 2 | Vitiugov, Nikita | 2731 | 2874 | ½ | 1 | 1.5/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 3 | Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi | 2721 | 2880 | ½ | 1 | 1.5/2 | 0.75 | |||||||||
| 4 | Harikrishna, Pentala | 2713 | 2707 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1.25 | |||||||||
| 5 | Ragger, Markus | 2670 | 2728 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1.25 | |||||||||
| 6 | Firouzja, Alireza | 2726 | 2665 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 7 | Grandelius, Nils | 2659 | 2719 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 8 | Anton Guijarro, David | 2697 | 2536 | 0 | ½ | 0.5/2 | 0.75 | |||||||||
| 9 | Navara, David | 2717 | 2529 | 0 | ½ | 0.5/2 | 0.25 | |||||||||
| 10 | Shankland, Sam | 2683 | 2529 | 0 | ½ | 0.5/2 | 0.25 |
In the Challengers, IM Tadeas Kriebel suffered his second loss. Kacper Piorun had sacrificed an exchange early, after which the game remained more or less balanced. After the time control, Kriebel went for a dubious trade (perhaps based on a miscalculation?) and went down quickly:
Prague Challengers | Round 2 Games
Prague Challengers | Round 2 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | Ptds | SB |
| 1 | Piorun, Kacper | 2611 | 2786 | ½ | 1 | 1.5/2 | 0.5 | |||||||||
| 2 | Stefansson, Hannes | 2529 | 2779 | ½ | 1 | 1.5/2 | 0.5 | |||||||||
| 3 | Van Foreest, Jorden | 2667 | 2641 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1.25 | |||||||||
| 4 | Esipenko, Andrey | 2654 | 2584 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1.25 | |||||||||
| 5 | Abasov, Nijat | 2670 | 2614 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 6 | Bartel, Mateusz | 2639 | 2548 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 7 | Nguyen, Thai Dai Van | 2560 | 2614 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 8 | Krejci, Jan | 2559 | 2501 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 9 | Cernousek, Lukas | 2442 | 2599 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/2 | 1 | |||||||||
| 10 | Kriebel, Tadeas | 2524 | 1770 | 0 | 0 | 0.0/2 |
The Prague Chess Festival has a prize fund of 44,000 euros ($48,000) and runs February 12-21 in Hotel Don Giovanni in Prague.
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