Rising Stars win again, with some luck

In the seventh round of the NH Chess Tournament the Rising Stars further increased their lead over the Experience team thanks to a somewhat lucky 3-2 win. Particularly Viktor Kortchnoi had good reason to be unhappy when he lost on time in a winning position, against Fabiano Caruana.

Again Korchnoi attracted all the attention today but this time not in a very positive way. He had been in severe timetrouble, and just when his opponent Fabiano Caruana blundered an exchange, Korchnoi lost on time. He then said to his 16-year-old opponent: "You never will play chess!" All the more surprising since earlier in the tournament, the 77-year-old had been quite positive about Caruana's play.

But the Experience team did score a victory today: Evgeny Bareev took revenge for his second-round loss against Stellwagen. It was quite a nice ending, and some of its finer details will be explained in my video of this round, scheduled to be published tomorrow.

Poor Ljubojevic is shaking his head more and more during his games, as he just doesn't understand his own play anymore. Yesterday he was thinking for an hour about meeting Wang Yue's 19.e4 with 19...Bf4 followed by 20...g5 and 21...Nh5, but when the Chinese played the move instantly, for some reason Ljubo took it without thinking. "I didn't sleep well because I kept on asking myself why," he said to me. Today, against Erwin L'Ami, he added another strange decision to his list: exposing his king far too much, just to win back a pawn he was strongly blockading anyway.

The Chinese locomotive was finally stopped, by the member of the Experience team who's playing not bad at all in Amsterdam: Simen Agdestein. Wang Yue did try it for a long time, and yes, he had a slight plus, but this time his Experienced opponent just did not collapse.

Before all this Jussupow had again drawn his game quickly, against Cheparinov, who is still in the race for the Amber ticket thanks to Wang Yue's draw.

The score is now 24?Ǭ?-10?Ǭ? for the Rising Stars team:

Rising Stars
1.	Wang Yue	g	CHN	2704	6?Ǭ?
2.	Cheparinov, Ivan	g	BUL	2687	5?Ǭ?
3.	Caruana, Fabiano	g	ITA	2630	5
4.	L'Ami, Erwin	g	NED	2610	4
5.	Stellwagen, Dani?ɬ´l	g	NED	2616	3?Ǭ?
Total					24?Ǭ?
Experience
1.	Agdestein, Simen	g	NOR	2583	3
3.	Bareev, Evgeny	g	RUS	2655	2?Ǭ?
2.	Korchnoi, Viktor	g	SUI	2602	2
4.	Ljubojevic, Ljubomir	g	SRB	2555	1?Ǭ?
5.	Jussupow, Artur	g	GER	2587	1?Ǭ?
Total					10?Ǭ?

Here are the games of the seventh round:






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