R7: Aronian increases lead
The top match Aronian-Topalov was won by the Armenian, who thus increased his lead to a full point again at the Amber tournament. Kramnik was held 1-1 by (former?) second Van Wely and Carlsen did the same against Anand.In their blindfold game, Topalov gave away a nice advantage against Aronian, and in the rapid it was Levon who dictated play. Strong was 13.Nf5! (with the idea 13...axb5 14.Bb4! Rg8 15.Rc1) and Topalov was already in big trouble around move 20.If Kramnik hasn't decided yet if he should ask Van Wely as his second again during the match in October, then at least the Dutchman has made another good impression on the Russian today. Loek drew his Black game (blindfold) quite easily with a King's Indian and went for Kramnik's throat from the very start in the rapid. That one also ended in a draw. Carlsen's goal was to do something about his bad score against Anand and he can be satisfied about his 1-1 today. Okay, with the Alekhine Magnus had a hard time against a strong playing Vishy, but in the rapid he had a great comeback. With all sort of tactical tricks he defeated the Indian.Morozevich-Ivanchuk was one of those games with lots of mistakes. Black was fine before he went 21...Qe7?, White was winning until he didn't play 30.c7! (even stronger than 30.Rxg2 Qxb6 31.Ng4 which was winning as well according to Ljubojevic and Nunn) and what Black played on move 46, well... But hey, who on earth puts a rook on c4, and leaves it there for fifteen moves? You can't remember this, can you? In the rapid Ivanchuk didn't come very close to a revenge.Leko and Gelfand are two friendly guys who don't like to take risks so much, and therefore such a minimatch ends in 1-1 like it did. In the minimatch Karjakin-Mamedyarov it was striking how easily Shakh held the draw with the rare 9...Kf8 in his Pirc.So Aronian is a point clear from Anand in the combined standings; Morozevich of course leads the blindfold section.
| Blindfold games: | Rapid games: | |
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.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097
