Gibraltar Chess Festival: 3 Leaders After Round 8
There's been a slinky effect at the 2019 Gibraltar Chess Festival, with seemingly alternating rounds of a sole leader, followed by the leading score group bunching up again.
After GM Vladislav Artemiev stretched the slinky by beating GM Hikaru Nakamura in round seven, now after round eight the contraction has happened again. His draw allowed him to be joined by GM David Navara and the upstart GM Kiriil Alekseenko, who both won today. The leading trio is on 6.5/8 with two rounds to go on the Rock.
In the race for the first place women's prize of a healthy £15,000, GMs Mariya Muzychuk and Ju Wenjun are both on 5.5/8 and lead the group of some 70 ladies.
GM Levon Aronian tried to flip-flop with the leader Artemiev, but even a new cat t-shirt couldn't do the trick as they drew on board one, keeping the Armenian returning champion a half-point back. One board further down, GM Le Quang Liem played nearly as lifeless of a Grunfeld as they come with GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and they also drew when the Frenchman equalized his pawn deficit.
With the stagnation at the top, Navara took the opportunity to break his streak of three half-points in a row (two draws and a bye) to beat the over-performing GM Nils Grandelius. Navara explained that he repeated a game that he played last year in the Polish League. The Czech number-one said he really tried to press today as White since there is a chance he could get a double-black finish.
"It worked better than I expected," Navara said. Grandelius offered a pawn to try to play against the backward White d-pawn, but that didn't get him full compensation. "It became winning for me as Black's knight is very poorly placed."
Navara said he was aware of the Swede's inclination to fall into time trouble, but that didn't play a part today.
"I hoped I could exploit this but in fact he did not play that slowly today," Navara said.
Perhaps the game of the round came from baby-faced 21-year-old Alekseenko. His wasn't a clean win, however. In fact, GM Arkadij Naiditsch may have felt he'd lost twice.
First Alekseenko piled up on the h-file in a seemingly insurmountable attack. Then in time pressure he essentially hung his queen, but the pressure on the flank was so intense that he won without her anyway! It wasn't planned that way, but sometimes you have to make do with what you've got!
One board lower, former champion GM Nikita Vitiugov (the only Russian who has won in the event's history) drew GM Ivan Saric. "The endgame I played [was] not too precise," the 2013 winner said.
The event's most illustrious champion tried to make back lost ground. Four-time winner GM Hikaru Nakamura, who is having an uncharacteristically up-and-down tournament here, tore up GM Rasmus Svane's Caro-Kann. The relatively quick win served the American well, as for the second time this fortnight, he had to rest before playing a very late PRO Chess League match.
Nakamura is one of the 13 players lurking a half-point back. Unless one of the leading score-group members can pull off two wins down the stretch, then it seems likely that another blitz tiebreak could be contested. The members of last year's supergroup of playoff contestants are all in that chase group (Vachier-Lagrave, Aronian, Nakamura), except for Richard Rapport, who is not playing in 2019.
GM David Howell is another one of the those with 6.0 points. He's trying to become the third Englishman to win on home soil (Mickey Adams once, Nigel Short thrice). But in round eight he explained that he had to face his worse nemesis—a top Indian junior. Howell said he'd rather face a 2700 than a teenage GM. Today he faced the youngest of them all, GM D Gukesh.
Although Gukesh didn't triumph today, he did make his commentary debut in Gibraltar. In a nice treat, he analyzed live with Howell on the live show (skip to 4:25:56).
Watch Gibraltar Chess Festival, round 8 with GM Simon Williams and IM Jovanka Houska from GibChess on www.twitch.tv
2019 Gibraltar Chess Festival Masters Section | Standings After Round Eight
| Rk. | SNo | Name | FED | Rtg | Pts. | |
| 1 | 6 | GM | Navara David | 2738 | 6,5 | |
| 1 | 11 | GM | Artemiev Vladislav | 2709 | 6,5 | |
| 1 | 28 | GM | Alekseenko Kirill | 2637 | 6,5 | |
| 4 | 55 | GM | Lalith Babu M R | 2547 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 2 | GM | Aronian Levon | 2767 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 8 | GM | Vitiugov Nikita | 2720 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 9 | GM | Le Quang Liem | 2714 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 17 | GM | Saric Ivan | 2690 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 1 | GM | Vachier-Lagrave Maxime | 2780 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 4 | GM | Yu Yangyi | 2764 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 5 | GM | Nakamura Hikaru | 2749 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 14 | GM | Matlakov Maxim | 2700 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 19 | GM | Howell David W L | 2685 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 49 | GM | Karthikeyan Murali | 2570 | 6,0 | |
| 4 | 27 | GM | Anton Guijarro David | 2642 | 6,0 | |
| 16 | 20 | GM | Grandelius Nils | 2682 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 62 | GM | Muzychuk Mariya | 2540 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 3 | GM | So Wesley | 2765 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 7 | GM | Naiditsch Arkadij | 2734 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 40 | GM | Svane Rasmus | 2594 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 26 | GM | Edouard Romain | 2643 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 13 | GM | Adams Michael | 2701 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 41 | GM | Vaibhav Suri | 2590 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 48 | GM | Ju Wenjun | 2575 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 37 | GM | Deac Bogdan-Daniel | 2603 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 36 | GM | Lagarde Maxime | 2604 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 18 | GM | Adhiban B. | 2689 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 16 | GM | Jones Gawain C B | 2691 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 21 | GM | Eljanov Pavel | 2680 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 99 | IM | Abel Dennes | 2458 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 83 | GM | Chandra Akshat | 2492 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 63 | GM | Puranik Abhimanyu | 2536 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 23 | GM | Melkumyan Hrant | 2660 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 42 | GM | Antipov Mikhail Al. | 2589 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 105 | IM | Sadhwani Raunak | 2451 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 45 | GM | Santos Latasa Jaime | 2581 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 33 | GM | Moussard Jules | 2605 | 5,5 | |
| 16 | 32 | GM | Tari Aryan | 2625 | 5,5 |
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Mike Klein began playing chess at the age of four in Charlotte, NC. In 1986, he lost to Josh Waitzkin at the National Championship featured in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." A year later, Mike became the youngest member of the very first All-America Chess Team, and was on the team a total of eight times. In 1988, he won the K-3 National Championship, and eventually became North Carolina's youngest-ever master. In 1996, he won clear first for under-2250 players in the top section of the World Open. Mike has taught chess full-time for a dozen years in New York City and Charlotte, with his students and teams winning many national championships. He now works at Chess.com as a Senior Journalist and at ChessKid.com as the Chief Chess Officer. In 2012, 2015, and 2018, he was awarded Chess Journalist of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America. He has also previously won other awards from the CJA such as Best Tournament Report, and also several writing awards for mainstream newspapers. His chess writing and personal travels have now brought him to more than 85 countries.
