Topalov escapes against Bu; Aronian and Svidler win

Bu Xiangzhi keeps on impressing in Nanjing: today he almost defeated Veselin Topalov, with whom he still shares the lead after seven rounds. It's not Ivanchuk's tournament; the Ukrainian lost with White to Aronian (and broke a chair along the way!) while Svilder also scored a win with Black, against Movsesian.

The 1st Pearl Spring Super GM Tournament takes place December 11- 21 in Nanjing, China. It's a six-player double round robin event with Veselin Topalov ( 2791), Vassily Ivanchuk (2786), Levon Aronian (2757), Sergei Movsesian (2732) Peter Svidler (2727) and Bu Xiangzhi (2714). Live games start daily at 15:00 local time which is early morning for Western countries (08:00 CET, 02:00 EST).

Round 7

Ivanchuk and Aronian left the theoretical waters before you could make yourself a cup of tea. White seemed to get a tiny (spatial) advantage, but Black's activity on the kingside kept the game balanced. The clock and the Black pieces both put enormous pressure on Ivanchuk, who finally decided to sacrifice his c4-pawn, but Black's king was remarkably safe and his queenside pawns decided the game quickly.



Apparently during the game Ivanchuk's chair broke and collapsed:





It looks like Movsesian had a bit of an off-day. Things went fine in the opening and early middlegame, which were complicated enough, but in the ending he missed several tactical shots by Svidler who thus managed to win an ending that should have been a draw somewhere. (Which meant he played a pretty good game!)



But the game of the day was of course Bu versus Topalov, the two leaders facing each other. And the Chinese sensation was almost complete after Bu simply won an exchange and subsequently liquidated to a position that was winning or very close to winning. It looks like 42.Qh6+ followed by 43.Ra1 would have meant a clear lead for the local hero... A narrow escape for Topalov, who wasn't too satisfied about yesterday's game either, as he mentioned during the press conference (transcript posted at the tournament website).



In the last three rounds the Bulgarian has two white's (against Ivanchuk and Svidler) and one black game (versus Svidler). Bu plays the white pieces one more time, against Aronian, and is Black against Svidler and Ivanchuk. Who knows, perhaps in the end Aronian will be the third dog running away with the bone...

Games of the 7th round:

[TABLE=526] [TABLE=536]

Links:

• Tournament website
• Live games
• http://www.64ge.net/
• Gujuan Tzu's Chessnews Blog
• TWIC's games in PGN