Three wins for White in Medias
Three victories for the white pieces shook up the standings completely at the Kings Tournament in Media, Romania. Carlsen and Radjabov took over the lead from Gelfand and Nisipeanu, going into the first rest day. Now with commentary by GM Dorian Rogozenco & a long video with Radjabov explaining in 'Corus style' his win against Gelfand.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
Source files: (for iPhone users and others)Round 4
It was three times 1-0 at the Kings Tournament in Media, Romania today. In the best round so far, Carlsen used the King's Gambit to beat Wang Yue; Ponomariov came up with novelty of his second Moiseenko to defeat Nisipeanu in a Blumenfeld and Radjabov managed to outprepare Gelfand in a Petroff.Especially Carlsen's second move attracted the attention at the start of the round. He is now clearly the highest rated player to ever try the most romantic of all openings, the King's Gambit, in an official game, and who would mind to see it more often as a way to avoid the Petroff?Unfortunately for decades more than one way to reach (at least) full equality has been known, and Wang Yue wasn't worse after the opening either. However, after some inaccuracies White's d-pawn became strong, and thanks to a nice tactic Carlsen managed to get it all the way to d7. Getting into a king of Zugzwang, China's number one then decided to give an exchange to get rid of it, and thought the ending might have been a draw, if he hadn't blundered with ...g5.
Ponomariov recovered well from his loss in round 3, and used the strong novelty 7.e4! of his second Alexander Moiseenko to beat Nisipeanu in the Blumenfeld Gambit. White soon got a huge space advantage and only optically the Romanian seemed to get back in the game. "It was always very bad for me," he said himself after the game.
The first game that finished was Radjabov-Gelfand, where the Azeri GM managed to outprepare his opponent in the Petroff. When Black went ...Bd6 instead of ...Bf6 it was basically already over. Don't miss the 20-minute video with Radjabov explaining the game with a demo board!
Round 4 games with commentary by GM Dorian Rogozenco
Game viewer by ChessTempo
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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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