20.04.2005 The game A.Dreev – L.Dominguez becomes the March laureate!

 Alexey Dreev has gained a convincing revenge for his suffering role in the February survey of the “Games of the month”. Although there were a lot of worthiest competitors, his March victory over Lenier Dominguez took the first place in 6 lists out of 10! For some strange reason, 3 lists resulted from the common examination of the creative achievements. Emil Sutovsky and Evgeny Najer, although gave different variants, both admitted that the lineup of their top lists were absolutely identical, the difference is only in the order of places. And two Ekaterinas – Kovalevskaya and Lahno – reduced their opinions to a common denominator after a heated argument, and produced a joint list. Alexandra Kosteniuk, Evgeny Gleizerov, Sergey Ivanov, Sergey Zagrebelny, Vladimir Potkin, Vladimir Barskij and Ilia Odesskij were working alone.     

 

The jury had a difficult task. The viewpoint of Alexandra that “With such tournaments as Linares, Poikovsky and Monaco we are just dazzled” is shared by almost all experts. In Sergey Ivanov’s opinion “in this set there’re approximately 5 encounters that one could name a winner more or less subjectively”.

 

Vladimir Barskij showed the maximum of political correctness when he had divided the 1st place among two competitors. His 1st place looks like this: Topalov – Kasimdzhanov – Kasparov. As you can see, Rustam suffered from the both parts.

 

Emil put the encounter Adams – Kasparov on the 1st place. He had annotated that game online and, therefore, had an opportunity to feel its refinements better than others. In particular he stressed an unusually slow maneuver Rb8 + Ba8 that had given Black a dangerous counter-attack. 

 

The female duet put the rapid game Ivanchuk – van Wely on the 1st position. Vassily created a masterpiece that is typical for him in the easy genre: he used a novelty – a slow prophylactic move linked to an idea of reaching an endgame without a piece, and then created domination by little strength.

 

Ilia put the game Topalov – Kasimdzhanov on the 1st place, so let’s raise our glasses to the combination of sport and art.

 

Other experts put the encounter Dreev – Dominguez on top of the list.

 

Here there’s the characteristic that was made by Sergey Ivanov: “Topical opening variation, bold sacrifice of two pawns for an initiative, gradual complicating, error of opponent, decisive tactical blow. After a forced tour in the centre black king was mated in public – in modern chess it does not happen too often. The first prize is awarded for the play in style of “new old” masters!”

 

As it’s easy to guess, the breakaway of the winning game from the close pursuers in such situation is quite serious. And on the places from 2nd to 4th there’s a hustle. The encounter Adams – Kasparov has a slight edge, then we have one more win of the 13th king over the FIDE champion, and at Lilliputian arm's length there’s one more defeat of FIDE champion to the 2nd winner of Linares.

 

I’ll mention the final disposition till the 10th place.

 

5. Grischuk – Rublevsky (Stutovsky: “It seems that Grischuk managed to close the whole variation. The large-scale play makes a very vivid impression”)

 

6. Dominguez – Bologan (Gleizerov: “It’s a great tactical achievement of Viorel Bologan. That’s what is called pure technique!”)

 

7. Svidler – Rublevsky (Gleizerov: “Logic, energy and pure calculation – on the whole it’s the Svidler’s speciality”)

 

8. Bacrot – Bologan (Sutovsky: “It’s a very clear game, Bacrot managed to overplay his terrifying opponent in critical moment of the tournament using the nuances”)

 

9. Ivanchuk – van Wely

 

10. Dzhakaev – Lagovsky

 

Now let’s talk about our short-range plans. I’m going to prepare an expert annotation of two best games, although it’s more difficult than usually because of an epidemic departure of almost all professionals to Sochi. Of course, some masterpieces were already covered in the press.

 

For the “64” I’ve a made a compilation of annotations of the game Kasimdzhanov – Kasparov: I’ve combined my annotations for the “Chess Today” and the ones of Sergei Shipov for the ChessPro website. For example, Evgeniy Gleizerov writes: “I wouldn’t hurry to blame 21.Nd5. However, Rustam had to move the bishop (25.Bf5!). After an exemplary 25…Qd6 (bad would be 25…N:d5? 26.R:f2!) 26.Be6 Kh8 27.a4 White opens the file for his rooks and receives a counterplay, whereas Black does not have a mating construction similar to one in the game.” One should look deeper somewhere in the sequence of 17th-25th moves, because when you deal with the performance of Kasparov, you always tend to think that everything was so ploughed up in his laboratory, as no excavator operator would have dreamed of.

 

Russian version of Ruslan Scherbakov’s annotations of the game Topalov – Kasimdzhanov from the “Chess Today” could be found in the “64” №4. The encounters from the Poikovsky are annotated by Viorel Bologan in the same issue of the “64” and by Vladimir Belikov in the “Schakhmatnaja nedelia” №8 and №9. On this site you can get the whole information about the encounter Loginov – Ionov from the Sergei Klimov's article about the Saint Petersburg championship. On the ChessPro website Nikolay Vlassov carried out the journal of the Amber tournament. The games that weren’t mentioned here will be included in my survey. See you next week!