Hikaru Nakamura is in the semi-finals of the Berlin FIDE Grand Prix after surviving a dead-lost position against Andrey Esipenko. Hikaru will face either Radek Wojtaszek or Richard Rapport, after Rapport beat Vladimir Fedoseev with the black pieces while Radek was somewhat lucky to draw what had been an overwhelmingly winning position against Grigoriy Oparin. Levon Aronian’s semi-final opponent is also undecided, after Wesley So spoilt a good position against Harikrishna and now plays a tiebreak against Leinier Dominguez, who beat Alexei Shirov on demand.
Esipenko-Nakamura was everything we could have asked for | photo: World Chess
You can replay all the games from the group stages of the Berlin FIDE Grand Prix using the selector below.
And here’s the day’s live commentary from WIM Raluca Sgircea and GM Arturs Neiksans.
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Levon Aronian’s victory in Pool C had been decided with a round to spare, but there was an intense battle in the remaining groups, with Hikaru Nakamura clinching victory while Pools B and D went to tiebreaks.
Let’s take each pool in turn.
It would be a case of so close and yet so far for Esipenko | photo: World Chess
Hikaru Nakamura had commented after beating Andrey Esipenko with the white pieces in Round 2.
Obviously it was a statement kind of game. After Sergey’s nonsense, for lack of a better way of putting it, it was quite nice to win.
Those words, directed less at Esipenko that at Sergey Karjakin’s criticism of Nakamura getting a wildcard ahead of Andrey, looked as though they might come back to haunt Hikaru. 19-year-old Esipenko, who got a wildcard himself when Dmitry Andreikin had to pull out at the last minute, needed to win on demand, and, up to a point, he did everything right.
To avoid the Berlin he played the Giuoco Piano with 3.Bc4, and he set about seizing space until tactical possibilities began to open up for him.
15.d5! Na7 16.Bxa6 Bxh3 17.Bxb7 was a way for Esipenko to win a pawn, but he may have decided there was no need to go for such adventures when simply 15.Rfe1 kept a big advantage. White had a huge space advantage.
Soon however, it became a question of how to convert that advantage into the win required, with 26.f4!? proving an effective move, but one with a concealed tactical flaw.
Nakamura was proud of finding what he thought was the best move 26…c6?!, only to be shocked when 26…Nb6! was pointed out to him afterwards — that move unites the rooks so that exd4 is now threatened, and seems to equalise almost on the spot. Hikaru had a very human reaction.
Ok, that’s ridiculous! Oh my god… computers… I thought that c6 was the best move, but Nb6, wow! Computers, that’s all I’m going to say.
Instead after 26…c6 27.fxe5 cxd5 28.e6 Qg6 Esipenko could have kept an extra pawn and a big positional edge with 29.cxd5, but he decided to play for an immediate kill with 29.Rf1!? Ne7 30.Rf7!?.
Once again it was hard to argue with the decision, since it worked out in the game.
The computer gives 32…Nc6?! as a fatal error and says that at the point Hikaru felt he’d blundered with 34…Kh7 he was already dead lost whatever he did. The critical position of the whole game perhaps came on move 35, when Hikaru played 35…Rg8, dodging some knockout blows, with just six seconds to spare.
Esipenko had just over a minute himself and, understandably, failed to switch gears and simply take a pawn with 36.Qxc4! (attacking two more pawns and defending b4), which turns out to be crushing. There’s nothing Black can do to solve the problem of the e7-pawn and the heavy pieces around his king.
Instead Andrey played the most natural move in the position, 36.Rg3!?, but 36…Qe6! was the start of some extremely resourceful defence from Nakamura. There was no killer blow, and after 37.Re3 Qg6 Esipenko missed a chance to play 38.Qxc4 in a slightly worse but still winning version. After 38.Rf8?! Re8 39.Rxg8 Kxg8 40.Qxc4+ Qf7 the Russian sank into a long think before playing 41.Qxa6 Rxe7 42.Rxe7 Qxe7.
Hikaru would criticise that approach later.
Then this queen ending. I’m sure it was lost, but Andrey I think did the wrong strategy. He used all the time at the start of the endgame rather than just making five quick moves and then thinking for 15-20 minutes.
You can argue about that, since if Andrey had found 43.Qc8+ Kh7 44.Qf5+! g6 45.Qf2! it looks as though his winning chances would have been excellent. The trick in some lines is that White can allow Black to grab the b4-pawn, since the a-pawn then promotes.
Instead after 43.Qxc6?! Qe1+ 44.Kh2 Qxb4 it always felt as though a draw was the likely outcome, even if Andrey could certainly have applied more pressure than he ultimately did. In the game the d-pawn soon became as powerful as the a-pawn, and a draw was inevitable.
So it was a huge missed chance for Esipenko to reach the semi-finals, with Sergey Karjakin quick to tweet.
"A very crazy game, but you bend, you don’t break, I guess", said Hikaru, before responding to the question of how he manages to remain calm under such pressure:
Which answer do you want? Fine, I’ll just give the honest answer. When you find something that pays a lot better than playing chess it’s very easy to not get very emotional and just try and play good moves.
You could say we now had a “non-professional” player in the semi-finals, but Alexander Grischuk was having none of that!
He’s not the first one to be playing this game like, "I’m already retired, I’m an amateur playing against professionals". He plays way more games than I do, for example, he plays 50 games per day… I’m not taking it even 1% seriously.
Grischuk-Bacrot was a wild game | photo: World Chess
Normally we’d just skip Grischuk’s own game against Etienne Bacrot since there was nothing at stake, but it was a Najdorf with some amazing moments.
Here 20…Nxe4!! was a fleeting chance for Bacrot to win the game, since 21.Nxe4 Bxe4!! 22.Rxc5 dxc5 23.Qe1 Rxd1+ 24.Qxd1 is followed by 24…Rxh2!, a move Grischuk spotted instantly when the knight move was mentioned to him after the game.
White has a queen for a rook, but there’s no way to avoid losing that queen and the game to the threat of Rh1.
Shortly after that missed chance, Grischuk took over with a standard but still beautiful move.
He did go on to win, but there were all kinds of twists and turns, with Grischuk admitting, “I won by a miracle, actually!”
This was the most tightly-contested group before the day began, and it more than lived up to expectations. Radek Wojtaszek and Vladimir Fedoseev were tied for first, with Richard Rapport half a point behind, and for a long time it looked as though Radek would take sole first place.
Radek Wojtaszek missed a great chance to win the game, but has a second chance in tiebreaks | photo: World Chess
Grigoriy Oparin suffered yet another opening disaster in Berlin, and by around move 23 it was time for Radek to cash in.
23…f4! is the most direct winning line, but 23…Qe8?! allowed 24.Rc6! and when the Polish no. 1 replied 24…Bxc6? instead of the still strong 24…f4! the game had suddenly turned on its head in the space of a couple of moves. In fact by the end Oparin could have played on for a win instead of taking a draw.
Why didn’t he?
I thought about it for a while, but I thought I do not deserve to win this game at all, so why even try? A draw is more than fine after that disastrous opening for me.
Wojtaszek understandably had mixed feelings about how the tournament had gone, pointing out:
I think that I scored well but I could easily have finished +3. I had so many winning moments that I didn’t see.
Fedoseev had the white pieces and seemingly everything in his favour, but he was ground down by an inspired Rapport | photo: World Chess
The draw meant Vladimir Fedoseev could have won the pool outright with a win, but he was another Russian for whom things went wrong in the final round. Richard Rapport commented:
The way I played there were no signs that I can score this final game with Black kind of on demand. Also the game was not really going my way. He played very solid and I tried to create something probably out of nothing, and then I felt like I got into some trouble as well, and then we had this moment when he wanted to repeat, and I think he should have just traded queens then [with 37.Qc7!] and then I think I’m the one who has to defend, but then things turned around, and after move 40 I tricked him with this Qa8 idea.
43.Re1?! was a mistake.
43…Qa8! and suddenly Black got a superior ending (with the rook still on c1, 44.Nb6! would be playable). Richard won with remarkable ease to force a tiebreak against Wojtaszek.
Levon Aronian had already won the group with a round to spare so that there was little left to play for. Nevertheless, Vidit-Keymer was a hard-fought 72-move draw, with 17-year-old Vincent Keymer needing to dig in to avoid losing a 4th game in a row.
Aronian and Dubov were forced to do some extra work by Grischuk! | photo: World Chess
Aronian-Dubov was understandably the quickest game of the round, with Levon getting an extra rest day to prepare for the semi-finals. There was one curiosity, though.
For the purposes of a draw by repetition the position is only considered the same if players have the same castling rights each time. Daniil commented on Grischuk’s intervention:
Sasha was probably the only man who knows the rules, actually, because the first time we claimed it was confirmed, but Sasha came and said, but after you played Rb8 you cannot castle long and you have to play a few more moves. It’s nice we have so many professional players and at least one of them knows how to claim threefold and can share his wisdom with all the rest!
Wesley So will have to come back for tiebreaks after his draw against Harikrishna | photo: World Chess
It looked for much of the round as though Wesley So was going to defeat Pentala Harikrishna and qualify for a semi-final against Levon Aronian whatever happened in the other game. His advantage grew greatest after Hari’s 28…e4.
Bh3-Be6 and eventually winning the d5-pawn is the computer’s suggestion, while there are other weaknesses White can target. In the game, however, Wesley went for 29.a4!? only to be hit by 29…Qd7!, a move he said he’d “totally missed”.
After 30.Bb5 Qg4! 31.Qxa5?! Qd1+ suddenly any advantage had gone and the game fizzled out into a draw.
Leinier Dominguez managed to bounce back with two wins in a row after losing to Wesley | photo: World Chess
That meant all eyes turned to Dominguez-Shirov, where Alexei had been taking risks right out of the opening.
White was always somewhat better, with Leinier crediting his win to finding an interesting plan.
Here he went for 21.Bf4!?, tempting the black rook to join the action. 21…Re2!? 22.Ne3! Rxb2 23.b4! followed, and Dominguez had activated his pieces at the cost of a pawn.
Alexei agreed with the assessment of that operation:
I played some natural moves like Re2 and Rxb2 and now I think that probably both of them were not correct. I played the most natural way, but this was what Leinier was catching me for!
There was a long way to go, but short on time Alexei was unable to navigate the complications safely and Leinier eased to victory.
That means that on Friday we have two tiebreaks: So-Dominguez (to decide who plays Aronian) and Wojtaszek-Rapport (to decide who plays Nakamura).
The format is first two 15+10 rapid games. If the score is tied we get two 3+2 blitz games. If the scores are still equal then one Armageddon game is played, where White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4 but a draw counts as a win for Black. A 2-second increment is added there, but only after move 60.
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