Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana meet in a showdown on Monday to decide who plays a World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen later this year. A draw will probably be enough for Karjakin after he drew with Levon Aronian, while Caruana, who missed a late chance against Peter Svidler, will need to win with the black pieces… unless Vishy Anand comes to the rescue by beating Svidler, when a draw is enough for Fabi. The day’s only decisive result was Hikaru Nakamura’s win over Veselin Topalov, who just wants it all to be over.
At the end of 2016 the World Champion will still be a player whose name starts Car/Kar | photo: World Chess
We knew it was going to be dramatic – with a World Championship dream still on the line for no less than six players – but not this dramatic! All three games involving those six could very easily have ended decisively, while the only game that didn’t matter did.
Let’s take that decisive game first:
All the predictions over how close the 2016 Candidates Tournament would be came true... with the exception of Veselin Topalov's collapse | photo: World Chess
It’s five losses, two in a row and almost 26 rating points dropped in Moscow now for Veselin Topalov, who’s plunged to world no. 16. Afterwards he summed up:
I’m just waiting for it to be over… What I did in London was similar a few months ago, but with less rounds. The last six months have been a real disaster.
In Moscow he was hit by Hikaru’s novelty 10…d4!, and was worse but still had a very drawable position until playing 31.Ra1? rather than trading rooks:
White has vague hopes of playing against the black king, but Black was much faster to target the white king, following 34…Nxe5! by rerouting the knight to f4. When it got there it was time for White to resign, only six moves later.
Although Nakamura started the day with no chance of winning the tournament, his win took him back up to 50%, meaning we have the bizarre situation that Topalov goes into the last round as the only player on a negative score – or more than a point behind the leaders. Hikaru felt his tournament turned on the touch-move loss to Aronian, and summed up:
At the end of the day the most important thing is to try and play well and salvage what I can. To be on even when I was on -2 is much better. More importantly, it shows that even though I was never really in contention I still have a chance to finish quite well in the standings, considering that first place was never really a possibility… Sometimes you do well, sometimes you don’t – that’s been the story of my life!
Watch the press conference below:
In the other games both players could mathematically qualify to play Carlsen, and the tension spilled over onto the board.
This game may go down in history as a mere stepping stone on the path to a glorious run of 14 draws for Anish Giri, but this was one day on which criticism could hardly be justified.
Everything Giri touches in Moscow seems to turn to draws, however exciting the ride | photo: World Chess
Although Anand had White the game turned in Giri’s favour
early on, with Vishy admitting he was trying to equalise by move 14 after
something went badly wrong:
I fell asleep in the opening and just tossed something out!
Things became critical on move 24, with Giri explaining his reasoning:
His position is about to collapse but it’s not so easy. I didn’t see anything better than this piece sacrifice.
24…Bxf2+!!?
The computer is sceptical, but it worked out perfectly for Giri, who had his opponent under immense pressure with the time control approaching. Just when it seemed White had consolidated Vishy jettisoned a pawn (“what I did is just absurd”) and found himself in great danger until an amnesty came on move 45:
45…Rf8?? (Giri: “It’s remarkable how bad a move this is”) This of course shot around the internet as one of those “snatching a draw from the jaws of victory” moves by Giri in Moscow, though it was almost worse than that! The players realised that after 46.Qf6! Qa2+?! (46…c3 is probably a better path to drawdom) the white king could actually have tried going to e4, when it was by no means trivial for Black to make a draw. Vishy commented, “I thought I should scare the little guy!”, though he settled for a draw by perpetual check.
Afterwards Giri described his streak of draws as “a scientific miracle”, pointing out he’d been won in two games and half-won in five. He concluded:
I’ve never done a thing like this. I don’t think there is anything systematically wrong with me.
Watch a very enjoyable post-game press conference:
And now for the players who started the day in the lead:
For the second day in a row Levon Aronian was involved in a hugely creative game with unusual sacrifices, but as his World Championship hopes were extinguished he wasn’t enjoying it that much:
It’s like you create a painting and then you suddenly throw your brush and hit the painting and the wall.
Things took a walk on the wild side after 25.Be1:
Aronian was happy with this move since he thought it would force his opponent to play passively with 25…c6. Instead Sergey went for 25…Nxa3!? and after 26.c6! Qe7 27.Qa2 bxc6 28.Rxc6 Bf7 29.Rc5! there was an extraordinary position on the board:
Karjakin decided to abandon the knight as lost with 29…Nxe3?! and ultimately got a position where the black passed a-pawn was all the compensation Black had for a missing piece. Sergey has achieved what he has in Moscow by defending very tough positions, though, and once again he managed – erecting an impenetrable fortress that his opponent stopped trying to batter down only on move 101. Aronian was disappointed, though it’s not obvious he missed anything that was definitely winning.
Watch the post-game press conference:
And then we have the day’s final game, where Caruana showed that 101 moves is nothing!
It was the kind of game after which you either laugh or cry | photo: World Chess
Fabiano described the middlegame reached in this encounter as “an incredibly difficult position to play for both sides”, which was both obviously true and seemed somehow to suit both players. First Fabiano felt he was close to winning, then a great counterattack had our commentators and others feeling a sense of deja vu…
…then an oversight saw Caruana on the verge of a phenomenally important victory, then it seemed to be a relatively easy draw, then Svidler “went somewhat crazy” (his words) and we got a rook + bishop vs. rook ending that almost ended in a white win before the 50-move rule ended the fun on move 116. Jan Gustafsson tried to make sense of it all:
The press conference is great fun, with Peter explaining how if he could have got up and sat at a different side of the board it might have made his life much easier, while he also gives a shout-out to Jan: “Gusti will never forgive me if I don’t say the stakes is high!”
So despite no less than seven players now being within a point of the lead, only Karjakin or Caruana can win:
Two games in the final round matter for the World Championship race - obviously Karjakin-Caruana, but also Svidler-Anand! Let's sum up:
In summary, though, Caruana is bound to feel he needs to win with the black pieces, since it would be optimistic to rely on Anand beating Svidler with Black when the former Champ has relatively little to gain. Can Caruana do it? (he has four classical wins to Karjakin's one - two of them with the black pieces!) And will the Giri-Topalov result go down in history for completing a perfect 14 draws? Also - is the World Championship system stupid?
We’ll find out the answer to all but that last question on Monday, with Robin van Kampen and Jan Gustafsson again commentating live. If you missed their Round 13 show there's a lot to enjoy below:
You can also watch the games in our free mobile apps:
See more:
We respect your privacy and data protection guidelines. Some components of our site require cookies or local storage that handles personal information.
Using chess24 requires the storage of some personal data, as set out below. You can find additional information in our Cookie Policy, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms of Website Use. Please note that your data settings can be changed at any time by clicking on the Data Settings link in the footer at the bottom of our website.
Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Comments 22
Be the first to comment!