Round 4
The first day of the fourth round witnessed a very cautious approach in the men’s section. Seven games out of eight were drawn, six of them without a real fight.
The first draw of the round came from the legendary Estonian Champion Jan Ehlvest who did not face any difficulty in imposing his tournament strategy upon his youthful opponent Grishchuk. While only few participants try to resolve their matches in two days avoiding tiebreak, Jan advocated the approach of saving energy for the crucial showdown in the tiebreak.
Dreev coolly punished the unfortunate opening choice by Veselin Topalov.
Of the drawn games only the encounter Morozevich – Tkachiev provided some excitement for the spectators. Tkachiev surprisingly avoided the temptation of carrying on in the position.
GM Viswanathan Anand qualified to the fifth round – quarterfinals – with a brilliant victory over young Bartolomiej Macieja of Poland in the second game of the fourth round. Anand was the only one spared from playing the tiebreak rapids.
Defending champion Alexander Khalifman was the second player in the men’s section to advance to the quarterfinals.
After a draw in their first game against Macieja, Anand opened the second game with his favourite King Pawn opening which was countered by Macieja with an uncommon side line of the solid Nbd7 variation of the Caro-Kann defence. The young Polish talent failed to get the nerve of the position and allowed Vishy to win the game with a brilliant and well calculated Bishop sacrifice.
The defending champion Alexander Khalifman of Russia also made his way to the 5th round. Khalifman was in no mood to go into a tiebreak once again since he was scheduled to play the mighty “Vishy Anand” in the next round. Khalifman seemed to be very tired and exhausted after his tiebreak matches against Peter Leko, but played good technical chess against the young Leitao of Brazil and scored a slow but convincing win after 57 moves in an English opening.
GM Vesselin Topalov of Bulgaria bounced back by scoring a crushing victory over GM Alexei Dreev of Russia. Dreev, who had scored a 25-move miniature win over Topalov in the previous game, was probably taken aback by some surprise in the opening. In the razor-sharp Moscow variation of the Slav defence, the Russian lost the thread of the game early and was checkmated on the 34th move in a one sided battle.
GM Tkachiev, a Kazakh now playing for France, scored a fine victory over Alexander Morozevich of Russia to cause a little upset. Of course, Tkachiev is a great player but Morozevich has an extremely brilliant record these days.
So five matches out of eight in the men’s section went to tiebreak while Grischuk vs Ehlvest and Adams vs Svidler were not so hard fought. Shirov certainly had to do some real hard work before making Boris Gelfand agreeable to a draw.
The tiebreak of the fourth round did not spring any surprises and one can conclude that the top players finally became accustomed to the championship format. In the men’s championship, Michael Adams, Veselin Topalov, Alexander Grischuk, Alexei Shirov and Evgeny Bareev have made it to the last eight whereas Alisa Maric and Qin Kanying have moved to the semi-finals in the Women’s championship.
Michael Adams of England displayed the best chess to outplay Peter Svidler in the rapid playoff.
Alexei Shirov got a handsome reward for his excellent home preparation. He succeeded in confusing Boris Gelfand of Israel in the Sicilian Najdorf – not many can succeed in that – to win a nice game
The most fiercely fought match between Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Alexei Dreev of Russia went in favour of the Bulgarian after the second tiebreak
Evgeny Bareev and Alexander Grischuk of Russia displayed excellent chess to beat the two most senior players in the tournament – Boris Gulko of USA and Jan Ehlvest of Estonia.
- Macieja, B. (POL) – Anand, V. (IND) – 0.5-1.5 (0.5, 0-1)
- Leitao, R. (BRA) – Khalifman, A. (RUS) – 0.5-1.5(0.5, 0-1)
- Svidler, P. (RUS) – Adams, M. (ENG) – 1.5-2.5 (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0-1)
- Dreev, A. (RUS) – Topalov, V. (BUL) – 2-4 (1-0, 0-1, 0-1, 1-0, 0-1, 0-1)
- Morozevich, A. (RUS) – Tkachiev, V. (FRA) – 0.5-1.5 (0.5, 0-1)
- Ehlvest, J. (EST) – Grischuk, A. (RUS) – 1.5-2.5 (0.5, 0.5, 0-1, 0.5)
- Shirov, A. (ESP) – Gelfand, B. (ISR) – 2.5-1.5 (0.5, 0.5, 1-0, 0.5)
- Bareev, E. (RUS) – Gulko, B. (USA) – 2.5-1.5 (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1-0)
Round 5
Defending champion Khalifman succeeded in making an easy and comfortable draw with black against Anand in the first game. They decided to play safe in the second game and go into tiebreak. Anand made it to the semi-finals by winning his tiebreak match against the defending champion Alexander Khalifman in a most dramatic way.
In the first rapid tiebreak game, Khalifman played the opening more aggressively than the one chosen by him in the regular game. At one stage, the defending champion appeared to be well set to win but the clock played a crucial role. Khalifman allowed Anand to trade his badly placed pieces and had to be content with a draw.
In the 15-minute tiebreak match, Anand changed his strategy. In all the four earlier games, Khalifman had succeeded in preventing Anand from getting desirable positions. Anand played 1.d4 this time, and it proved to be the right decision. Khalifman made the piece sacrifice in the Slav defence. The game ended in 41 moves without any struggle. In the second 15-minute game, Anand equalized in the Nimzo Indian defence and went on to outplay his desperate opponent and offered a draw, which was enough for him to move to semi-finals.
It was a pleasant birthday gift for Anand who turned 31 on December 10. He and his wife Aruna cut his birthday cake in the tournament hall after the games. “Khalif is a very tough opponent and I was lucky to survive that brush with death. After that I was so relieved, I played much better,” Anand said. ”I was careful, because I knew I could be eliminated. He always gives me problems. It was the same in Groningen and I expected it to be tough. But I did not know it would go on like this. He is a very tough player.”
In a sharp game from the Sicilian Najdorf, Adams had absolutely no difficulty in scoring over his Bulgarian opponent Veslin Topalov in the first game of the quarterfinals. Topalov’s sharp and tactical play did not seem to work against Adam’s accuracy. The next day, Adams became the first player to advance to the men’s semifinals when he drew his game against Topalov. The consistency of Adams in the knockout World Championships is indeed remarkable: finalist in Groningen, semifinalist in Las Vegas and now Delhi.
Evgeny Bareev of Russia made himself auspicious for the first time in the championship when he outplayed ‘tactical’ Alexei Shirov in Queen’s Gambit accepted. Shirov bounced back the next day, leveling the score against Evgeny Bareev. The author of Fire on the board indeed seemed to have decided to go all out for a win after his previous round loss. Bareev made the things too easy. Shirov qualified to the semi-finals by beating Evgeny Bareev in the rapid tiebreak.
Vladislav Tkachiev (France) and Alexander Grischuk (Russia) made a quick draw, in the spirit of the similar draw they made the day before. Grischuk played the Slav defence and then transposed the game in Stonewall Dutch. The players agreed to a draw with almost all the pieces on the board. Grischuk beat Tkachiev in a very interesting tiebreak. Tkachiev seemed to be doing pretty well in the first rapid game against Grischuk’s Stonewall Dutch but missed some chances and had to be content with a draw. Grischuk won the second game with white quite convincingly. “I wanted to go back to Moscow but now I must stay here because I won this match”, he said.