World Cup: Morozevich, Le, Karjakin, Gelfand Eliminated

In today's tiebreak of round 4 at the World Cup in Tromsø Alexander Morozevich, Le Quang Liem, Sergey Karjakin and Boris Gelfand were eliminated. Morozevich lost an epic battle to Evgeny Tomashevsky, who knocked out top seed Levon Aronian in the previous round. Le Quang Liem was defeated by Peter Svidler, Karjakin went down against Dmitry Andreikin and Gelfand lost to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. 

The amazing duel between Alexander Morozevich and Evgeny Tomashevsky is one that will be remembered for years. After two draws in the rapid games, first it was 36-year-old Morozevich, once ranked second in the world, who took the lead (this game had 10 minutes and 10 seconds per move), but not after surviving a terrible middlegame position. With a few seconds on the clock, Tomashevsky missed a smothered mate:

This meant that Tomashevsky had to win with black to stay in the tournament. He chose the Caro-Kann, Morozevich played the ultra-solid Exchange variation, and after 45 moves only rooks and queens were left. After lots of maneuvering and some pawn breaks, Tomashevsky was a pawn up in a queen ending and finally won after 169 moves!

And so two more games followed, at 5 minutes and 3 seconds per move. For each pair of games a new drawing of colors takes place, and Tomashevsky got black again. In another Caro-Kann, the 26-year-old GM won again:

And so the roles were reversed! Now Morozevich was in a must-win situation. In a super exciting last game, Tomashevsky got a big advantage at first, then Morozevich came back and both sides had three connected passed pawns. As it turned out, Tomashevsky's pawns were more dangerous as he could work with checkmate ideas. In the end he found a way to give perpetual check and went for it, because a draw was enough. Morozevich had to throw in the towel and accept the draw.

After the game Tomashevsky quickly found out that he had even missed a mate in one! He was just too tired and nervous to spot it, blinded by his own way of reaching the next round. As he joined commentators Susan Polgar and Lawrence Trent, he said:

"I can't find moves. Er... words."

In another match between two Russian players, the lowest rated of the two surprisingly won both games. Dmitry Andreikin eliminated Sergey Karjakin, starting with a Torre Attack that was an attack indeed:

Joining the commentators, Hikaru Nakamura said that he was slightly surprised by Dmitry Andreikin's fairly risky choice of the Steinitz French for the next game. But it paid off: also as White Karjakin was just outplayed:

Peter Svidler won the previous World Cup and still has chances to become the first player to win two in a row, which would be an amazing achievement. After a draw in the first game, the grandmaster from St Petersburg struck in the second, winning a drawn ending that ended with him checkmating the Vietnamese grandmaster with bishop and knight! Black's decisive mistake seems to be 111...b4 where 111... Re1 112. d6 Kc6 113. Bf5 b4 114. Ke6 b3 115. d7 b2 116. d8Q b1Q draws.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is one of three grandmasters representing France in this World Cup; Laurent Fressinet and Etienne Bacrot were eliminated earlier. Joining the commentary, Vachier-Lagrave said he had been lucky as he had "blundered" the move 22...Qg3 in the first game, which he managed to win anyway:

Vachier-Lagrave's next task was to hold his black game, and he succeeded after a tense fight:

The pairings for the fifth round, which starts Friday at 15:00 CET / 09:00 EDT are Kamsky - Tomashevsky, Svidler - Andreikin, Caruana - Vachier-Lagrave and Kramnik - Korobov.

FIDE World Cup 2013 | Round 4 Results

Held every two years, the World Cup is part of the World Championship cycle. The winner and the runner-up will qualify for the 2014 Candidates Tournament. The World Cup takes place August 10th-September 3rd in Tromsø, Norway. Photos by Paul Truong courtesy of the official website; games via TWIC.