Three draws in second round Nanjing

All games in the second round of the Pearl Spring tournament in Nanjing ended in draws. Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen finished first after continuing their theoretical discussion in the Breyer Ruy Lopez. Bacrot escaped against Topalov, while Gashimov was close to defeat against Wang Yue.

General info

The third Kanion Cup Nanjing Pearl Spring Chess Tournament takes place October 21-30 in Nanjing, China. Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Veselin Topalov, Wang Yue, Vugar Gashimov and Etienne Bacrot play a double round-robin with one rest day halfway. More info here.

Videos

Round 2 report

After the first round Wang Yue was asked by a local reporter whether he was planning to win some games. After all the local hero had drawn so many games last year, and then he started with another one this year. The grandmaster answered that he was confident that he would, but today Wang Yue might have lost some of that confidence. Against Gashimov he missed several promising, close to winning continuations, and eventually even had to defend a worse rook ending.

Gashimov himself felt he was lost, but didn't see exactly where. Then he felt he might have been winning, but he didn't see that either. He turned out to be right in the first case and wrong in the second, as the computer shows.



"I get to play against a strong novelty again," Bacrot lamented after his lucky escape against Topalov. The move Qe7 in the opening was "very difficult to play over the board". He couldn't calculate it till the end, but Bacrot decided to go for 19.e4 anyway, and his gut feeling was right. But 22.fxg4 was a big mistake and while Topalov was thinking after 25.Bh4 the Frenchman suddenly saw why, but Topalov didn't. "With White under pressure immediately, it's difficult," said Bacrot. He didn't suffer from a jet lag: "A theory lag, maybe."



Long before these games, Anand and Carlsen had already played an unevenful draw. There's not much to say about the game, except for the following, funny detail. In ChessVibes Openings 94, which was published this early morning, our editors GM Sipke Ernst and IM Robert Ris wrote about last week's game Anand-Carlsen (from Bilbao, where the Norwegian had played 16...cxb5 against both Anand and Shirov):

After 16.axb5 (the alternative is 16.a5), Black usually recaptures with the a-pawn: 16...axb5 17.Rxa8 Bxa8 or 17... Qxa8. In the symmetrical positions that arise after White takes on e5 White is slightly more active. Black has to be a little careful but has good chances of drawing. Still, many chess players find it depressing to play a position right from the opening in which the maximum you can hope for is to split the point. Our guess is that Carlsen is probably one of them and he showed that it's possible to create a lot of dynamism by recapturing the other way: 16...cxb5."

And... just on the same day Mr Carlsen goes for 16...axb5 anyway. :-) At least he showed a big grin on his face when yours truly told him this anecdote.

Games round 2

Game viewer by ChessTempo


Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2010 | Schedule & results


Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2010 | Round 2 standings

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC