Hello dear chess friends! We continue our annotations. Today is the last round of the group tournaments in Dortmund. The pairs: Lutz - Topalov 1/2 Shirov - Gelfand 1-0 Bareev - Morozevich 1-0 Leko - Adams 1-0 Thoughts before the games: Lutz - Topalov The leader of the 1st group Topalov plays with the outsider. The result of this game does not matter - the contenders will just play chess. Though Veselin needs to rest before the semi-final... The draw is probable. Berlin variation of Rui Lopez (C67), rare move 10...Be7. Till the 15th move the contenders repeated the game Аnand - Kramnik, Leon (advanced chess) 2002. Instead of 15...h5 Topalov used the novelty - 15...g5. Lutz has used the weakening of the f5-square, transfering the Knight to the g3 and d4 squares, keeping the slightly better position. Though in this opening Black ctands very densily. Shirov - Gelfand The duel of the competitors - Shirov has the white pieces and has a half of a point more than Gelfand. The last chance for Gelfand is that Aleksei playing by White important games very often gives to contender to struggle for... any result. It's very difficult to predict the result of this game. According to the opening choice Aleksei wanted to make the draw only. In response to 2...Nc6 in Sicilian he's played 3.Bb5 with following 4.Bc6. The position after 5...Bg4 already met in the practice of the both contenders. Shirov won Tapalov by White after 6.с3 Nf6 7.h3 (Prague 2002), Gelfand won by Black by 6.h3 Bf3 7.Qf3 (Munchen 1994 blitz). To repeat the taking on the f3 of course he doesn't want - and here the bomb exploded! 7.е5!? - very interesting novelty, though the idea is not new of course. It's not so easily to play 7...dе, and therefore... White spoils the pawn structure of Black on the Q-side and looks in the future confidently. The future = going through into the semi-final :). The demonstration of the confidence Ng3-Ne4 leads to the Gelfand's pawn sacrifice. He has no any compensation, but the struggle goes on:) Bareev - Morozevich The leader of the 2nd group Bareev has to try very much for going through to the semi-final without tie-break. He was beaten yesterday and today his contender is unpredictable Morozevich. And black pieces help Aleksander to win the decisive games. We expect the hot battle! And here White trys to get the draw. Bareev trys to get the position as simple as it possible, Morozevich trys to prevent ti. After 3...с5 follows 4.с3! (A40) Yeah it's the real sample of humanitarian chess! No King's indian or Benoni - almost lifeless Grunfeld. The response 4...Qa5!?! - 1st sign to show the will. From the moment of 5.Nd2 cd 6.Nb3 Qb6 7.cd Nf6 begins original game. Only one source - the game Zara - Timman Groningen 1968. Timman moved 7...a5 < but could not win the game. After the development of all pieces the situation on the board similar to King's indan variation with g3. But only Knight b3 has not good position, but Black lost several tempos too. Seems White has slightly better position, but the purpose is the same - the draw! And position is still playable. It looks Morozevich solved the opening's problems better than Gelfand. Leko - Adams The game of the spiders! Nobody wants to lose - the draw leads to the tie-break. The draw is a very probable result in this pair. Petrov defence (С42). Peter got a very suitable for himself position after opening. 19 moves the contenders repeated the game of the aces of ICC Giaccio - Zarnicki, Pinamar 2002. Right after the opening the game passed into the slightly better for White ending. The play of Adams looks irresolute, his position becomes worse... Will Leko be able to beat Adams by his "spider's" method? And so - the 2 games with full tension, where Black will try to sharpen the game. In the 2 other games the struggle will be rather "sluggish". |
