Three draws in round 2 Medias
All three games in round 2 of the Kings Tournament in Medias, Romania ended in a draw. Magnus Carlsen tried for a long time to win an ending against Teimour Radjabov, who said he was simultaneously "fighting against a flu." Games annotated by GM Dorian Rogozenco & new video.The fourth Kings Tournament takes place in Medias, Romania from June 14 till 25. Against it's a 6-player, double round-robin, with two rest days. This year Carlsen, Gelfand, Nisipeanu, Ponomariov, Radjabov and Wang Yue play. The rate of play is 2 hours for the first 40 moves, one hour for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes plus an increment of 30 seconds per move.The rounds start each day at 15.30 which is 14.30 CET and 08.30 EDT. They can run well into the evening, as we won't see ultra-short draws in this tournament - no draw agreement by the players are allowed before move 30, except for cases of a triple-repetition, a perpetual or a theoretically drawn position.The event is organized by Romgaz and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade”. This year the tournament is officially part of the Grand Slam, substituting the cancelled MTel Masters. Venue is the brand new Romgaz Center in Medias (near Bazna), but the organizers are considering to move back to Hotel Complex Balnear Expro in Bazna, where everyone is staying. ChessVibes will be at the tournament from start to finish, providing videos for the official website:Videos
Round 2
Although the temperature in the playing hall was much better thanks to some improvements by the organizers, Ruslan Ponomariov again finished first in round 2. He said that by now he's quite "fed up with these Catalans", but still "Black is quite solid". Wang Yue, who had to wait 20 hours at Munich airport and then had a 7-hour game in the first round, wasn't unhappy with a short game.
More interesting was Gelfand-Nisipeanu, where we saw a clash between the bishop pair and the knight pair. Black was just in time with the risky but necessary ...b5 move, because otherwise White would have had time for Rd1 and Be3, with an advantage. The players agreed that in the final position Black is probably a bit better, but continuing wouldn't have been without risks. As Gelfand said it, "bishops are bishops."
Carlsen was a bit surprised about Radjabov's opening choice, but he thought he "handled it quite well," as he reached a promising position. He thought he shouldn't have gone for the luiquidation in the middlegame. "I thought I would win a pawn, but I didn't." Radjabov played carefully till the end, as he didn't want to spoil it by falling for a trick after playing so long. "It was probably a draw all the time."
More comments by the players in the round 2 video, now up.
Round 2 games annotated by GM Dorian Rogozenco
Game viewer by ChessTempoPhotos © Tournament website
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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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