Dmitry Andreikin will play Anish Giri in the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix semi-finals after dramatically winning a lost position against Etienne Bacrot. Any other result would have given Sam Shankland a chance in a playoff. The other semi-final will be Richard Rapport vs. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave after Richard cruised to a draw against Alexei Shirov while Maxime drew a thriller against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Yu Yangyi could have forced a playoff with a win over Alexandr Predke, but instead the Russian grandmaster won with the black pieces.
It seemed Sam Shankland was sure to play a tiebreak after Dmitry Andreikin got into trouble against Etienne Bacrot, but a wild turn of events followed | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
You can replay all the games from the group stages of the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix using the selector below.
And here’s the day’s live commentary from Peter Svidler and Jan Gustafsson.
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The group stages of the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix are over, with the semi-finals starting Wednesday, March 9th.
No tiebreaks were needed, with a clear winner in all four groups. Here’s how they finished.
Let’s take a look at the last-round action.
Dmitry Andreikin would ultimately qualify from Pool A | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
Pool A got off to a slow start with Sam Shankland and Alexander Grischuk making a 30-move draw which left both players frustrated. Sam commented:
Of course I was hoping to find some winning chances today, but I understood it’s not likely to beat somebody this strong with the black pieces on demand, so I just thought I would play a normal game and try to play reasonably dynamic chess.
Sam played the Sicilian and was “hit by” a novelty on move 6.
As Sam explained, however, he’d looked at this with a different move-order for an earlier game in the tournament, with Grischuk lamenting:
c4 is “novelty”, played for the first time, but unfortunately I didn’t pay enough attention that it can transpose to a well-known line, and that’s why I was completely surprised both by the moves and by the speed of Sam.
Sam felt he was more or less forced to go for the line he went for, which traded down pieces into a drawn position. Grischuk summed up his event, which started with two losses before ending with four draws:
The first two rounds I played like an amateur, basically, making seven blunders in those two games, and so at that moment it looked as if I’m somewhat likely to end up with 0/6, but after that I limited the damage. I wanted to win one game. I didn’t want to play for a draw today, but my preparation was not very fortunate and I never had any realistic chance today, but it’s ok.
Grischuk is out of the Belgrade Grand Prix, but he left some controversy when he responded to a question from Dina Belenkaya on prearranged draws:
I think it’s totally fine. For me it’s a huge difference between a prearranged draw and a prearranged win, and a prearranged win is a complete taboo, just like the worst thing, together with cheating, and prearranged draws, I don’t see an issue with them. Now there is some sort of war against them. Maybe it will change, but it’s a part of chess culture for a century at least, and maybe when my generation goes away and the new generation takes over completely the culture will change. I also don’t see what’s really an issue with them. I’m a big proponent of knockout tournaments and there it’s not a problem at all, because even if people pre-arrange it and it’s 1:1 they still play the playoffs, and you cannot pre-arrange it to the end. It’s also completely pointless in a knockout tournament.
That draw meant all eyes turned to Andreikin-Bacrot, where Dmitry Andreikin had a slow-burning advantage but it seemed more likely the game would end in a draw, which would mean an Andreikin-Shankland playoff. Then, with 25.Qxb8+!?, the stakes were raised enormously.
Just a couple of moves later Dmitry was in fact winning.
The best move was 28.Re1!, with the basic plan of moving the knight from e5 next and then playing Ree8, when the rooks are lethal on the back rank. That was very tricky to spot, however, and after the more natural 28.Rac1!? White’s small advantage was hard to maintain in time trouble. In fact Dmitry had soon lost all control of the position, and it was Bacrot’s game to win.
Both players were down to around a minute or here Etienne would no doubt have found a win. Perhaps the simplest is 37…Nc6!, blocking the rook's defence of c1 and hitting the rook on g8, when the threat of checkmate with e.g. 38…Qb1+ leaves White dead lost. After any move that stops checkmate Black can simply take the rook on g8, with an overwhelming advantage.
Instead Etienne spent just over two minutes on 37…Rxa5?, when he is still better but 38.g4! suddenly turned the tables so that it was White threatening checkmate. That could be parried (e.g. with 38…f5!), but after 38…Nd7 39.Rxd7 the losing move was 39…Qb1+? (39…f5! is still ok).
The problem is that the white king can escape the checks and Black has no good way to stop White’s rooks giving checkmate. The game ended 40.Kg2 Qe4+ 41.Kg3 Ra3+ 42.Kh4 and Etienne resigned, with mate inevitable.
That meant Dmitry Andreikin was in the semi-finals, while Sam Shankland, who would have played Bacrot in a tiebreak if the Frenchman had won, was out.
Anish Giri's 2/2 start in Belgrade proved enough to reach the semi-finals | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
Andreikin will now play Anish Giri, whose task in the final round was to make a draw on demand. He managed, but not without a scare, since Nikita Vitiugov, who needed a win, played a sideline of a sideline and caught his Dutch opponent off-guard. White got almost everything he could hope for.
As Nikita summed up, however:
I was quite excited after the opening. I remembered this trick 18.Rb1! is a very important one because it doesn’t allow Black to go Bc4 as it sets up b3. I think the position was very promising. Maybe it was between equality and a huge advantage for me, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to pose any problems after my prep finished. It happens, because it’s not easy to play chess!
Nikita picked up the d5-pawn soon afterwards, but when he allowed an exchange of queens the game fizzled out into a draw. The Russian had no complaints, describing Anish as the best player in the group. He also referred to possible sanctions on Russian chess players:
I hope at least I will be permitted to play the last stage, because these days it’s not that obvious for Russian players, but I hope I will play there, and I’ll show something better than I did here.
Anish is now focused on the semi-finals, but we can’t expect any tweets from him:
I don’t tweet anymore. Twitter’s become too hostile for me right now, so I’m taking a break from my Twitter.
It was a tough end for Harikrishna, but the chances of qualification had gone before the last game | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
The other game in the group couldn’t affect qualification, but it saw Amin Tabatabaei ending on a high by beating Harikrishna with the black pieces to end on 50%. It was disappointment for Hari, who began and ended with a loss to finish on -2.
Richard Rapport is now the overall leader of the Grand Prix series after reaching the semi-finals of two events in a row | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
Pool C featured the least drama, with Richard Rapport cruising through to the semi-finals with a 30-move draw in which he was never in any trouble. Alexei Shirov explained that he was happy to have finally got a win in the FIDE Grand Prix series on the previous day and wasn’t planning to go for more in the last round:
My shape is not that good and to play for a win with Black would be just crazy.
Richard, meanwhile, is happy with how things are going:
It looks better than it did in Berlin, considering I won the last game in classical and then I had playoffs to play, which was also very tiring. And after that I played Hikaru, who was just resting basically and was in great shape.
Fedoseev-Vidit ended in a draw, with Vidit missing a win. The Indian star had begun with a perfect 2/2 but nothing had gone right afterwards as he sank back to 50%.
Mamedyarov-MVL was a thriller | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
The most sustained tension of the final round came in Pool D, where both games were full of excitement. Mamedyarov-MVL was a game Shakhriyar knew he had to win, and, predictably, he didn’t disappoint. He went all-out for a fight, with 13.0-0-0!? ensuring an exciting struggle.
Shakhriyar, who surprisingly ended up drawing all his games, said his games against Maxime are always interesting, and this was no exception.
We tried, we played a good game. It looks very good for White, maybe somewhere, maybe not, because every day I think my position’s very good, but finally when I analyse my games I see that ok, I don’t know what happened, but it was a good try!
Maxime admitted he’d missed some details, but he also noted, “it has been a long time since I felt like I was calculating lines so sharply, so accurately”, and he found a beautiful finish.
30…Rc1+! 31.Rxc1 Qxd3+ 32.Ka1 Qa6! (threatening to give checkmate with Qxa3+) 33.Kb1 Qd3+ and the game ended in a draw by repetition.
That still left everything to play for, since Yu Yangyi would reach a tiebreak against MVL if he could beat Alexandr Predke with the white pieces.
Yu Yangyi-Predke was the last game to finish | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
For most of the game that outcome looked likely, but Alexandr managed to take over the initiative in the middlegame until Yu decided the only way to play for a win was to give up his queen.
It gave him real practical chances and ensured a long struggle, during which there was time for Peter Svidler to regale us with some stories…
…but ultimately it was only Predke who was ever better and he ended by sealing a win to wrap up a performance that more than justified his place in the Grand Prix series.
So with the group stages over we now know it’s Andreikin-Giri and Rapport-MVL in Wednesday’s semi-finals. Join Jan Gustafsson and Peter Svidler for all the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix Knockout action from 09:00 ET | 15:00 CET | 19:30 IST.
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