Day 5: Vachier-Lagrave bounces back, Caruana stumbles
What started off as a slow day with three draws quickly turned dramatic as Maxime Vachier-Lagrave bounced back in today’s round to defeat Darius Swiercz, while Jeffery Xiong took advantage of a time-trouble blunder by Fabiano Caruana to upset the World No. 2 in stunning fashion. With the win, Vachier-Lagrave propelled himself back into a tie for first place with 3.5/5, where he shares the lead with both Wesley So and Leinier Dominguez heading into the rest day tomorrow. So – Rapport | ½-½, 17 moves A surprise quick draw in the Berlin ended this game in less than 40 minutes into the round. In the post-game interview afterwards, So admitted he was not feeling well due to “a lack of sleep” from drinking too much coffee in the days prior. The draw also gets Wesley one step closer to clinching first place in the overall GCT standings. Svidler – Shankland | ½-½, 24 moves Peter Svidler opted for the rare 6.Bd3 against the Najdorf as the players quickly left charted waters and were on their own in a thematic Sicilian structure. The game stayed even the whole time, with both sides having weaknesses that balanced each other out. After an exchange of knights, the players soon repeated moves in an otherwise equal position. Mamedyarov – Dominguez | ½-½, 38 moves Using the rare move 7.Re1 in the Classical Queen’s Gambit Accepted, Mamedyarov prepared a sharp pawn sacrifice that gave him long-term compensation in the form of piece activity. However, Dominguez defended well, and after a series of exchanges, the players found themselves in a dead-equal rook endgame, where they immediately repeated moves. Vachier-Lagrave – Swiercz | 1-0, 47 moves Although Swiercz was able to get in some nice preparation in a topical line of the Italian Game, Vachier-Lagrave reacted well and still found a way to pose problems for his opponent. One wrong decision by Black gave MVL the opportunity to seize the initiative, as he found a dynamic way to activate his pieces and secure a significant advantage. Further precise technique by the Frenchman allowed him to reach a rook endgame with two pawns up, which he converted smoothly. Xiong – Caruana | 1-0, 36 moves Things looked a bit dangerous for Xiong as he quickly fell worse as White in a Reti Opening, due to Black’s space advantage in the center. However, one wrong move by Caruana turned the tables, as Xiong was able to activate his entire position thanks to a strong knight maneuver. In mutual time-trouble, it seemed like Caruana had managed to escape into an equal endgame, but a further blunder by Fabiano gave Xiong the opportunity to win a full minor piece, which he immediately spotted. Not seeing a way out, Caruana then flagged in a lost position, earning the 20-year-old Xiong one of the biggest scalps of his career. After Black’s last move 23…Nc6-d8, Xiong found the strong reply 24.Nb4!, looking to plant the knight on the excellent d5-square. Round 6 of the 2021 Sinquefield Cup takes place on Monday, August 23, starting at 2:50 PM CDT, with all the action covered live by commentators GM Yasser Seirawan, GM Alejandro Ramirez, and GM Maurice Ashley. Watch live on grandchesstour.org as well as twitch.tv/kasparovchess. Text: IM Kostya Kavutskiy Photo: Lennart Ootes and Austin Fuller Further Information:Web: GrandChessTour.org | Twitter: @GrandChessTourInstagram: @GrandChessTour | Facebook: @GrandChessTour#GrandChessTour#STLRapidBlitz Venue: Saint Louis Chess Club, USAAugust 10- August 16, 2021 Press Contact:press@grandchesstour.org Photos: Courtesy of Grand Chess Tour and Spectrum Studios Credits available on Flickr. Livestream:Grandchesstour.orgKasparovchess.com
Everything on the line after Day 2
Saturday, August 21st 2021 – Sixty federation teams battled it out today on Chess.com’s online servers for the sixteen qualification spots that advance to the next stage of the Olympiad. Pool A started very early – 0800 UTC – and Pool E closed the playing day at 20.00 UTC, for more than twelve hours of official online chess: rounds 4-7 are now in the books! Things are starting to look very good for Hong Kong, who are leading Pool A with 13/14. They finished today’s session with three match wins and one draw against Nepal, who are just behind in the standings with 12/14. Lebanon also had a great session, overtaking Maldives (now 4th), completing the three direct qualification spots, pending tomorrow’s four final rounds. There are still quite a few direct matches between these four contenders, so anything can happen. Even Fiji and Oman (5th and 6th) have an outside chance of getting in, but they must be very fortunate. Kenya had a huge chess afternoon, pulling ahead in Pool B. After two wins against direct competitors Malawi and Palestine (both on 12/12), they now lead the group with 14/14, and it seems very unlikely that they will miss a qualifying spot. Sharing second and third place, Malawi and Palestine still have to face each other tomorrow and both of them also will play against Lesotho, who might still have a chance to qualify. Meanwhile, Namibia (on 10/14) will try to finish strong and take advantage of any setbacks at the top of the standings. There was a five-way tie after the first three rounds yesterday afternoon in Pool C but we did mention that there were still some direct clashes ahead. Only two teams finished the day unscathed: both Angola and Cyprus now share the lead with a clean 14/14 result, after scoring very heavily against the bottom part of the table. However, Jersey is right behind them on 13/14, and they all have to play each other tomorrow in the final four rounds. Although unlikely, even Ethiopia and Sudan (both on 10/14) might have a chance for third place if they can take down the top scorers. One of the most important matches in Pool C was the round seven clash between top contenders Ethiopia and Cyprus, which eventually ended 2-4. The game diagram corresponds to board three, where Alice Ioannides Liu was able to win the point for Cyprus against her Ethiopian opponent Lidet Abate Haile. Ioannides Liu – playing Black – had been pressing for a while, but White was defending well. Disaster struck here when Abate Haile played 38.Kg1? (instead of blocking the check with 38.Bf3 and the game goes on). Black capitalized quickly with 38…Qc1+! 39.Qf1 Qe3+! winning the bishop. Note that the pawn on g3 does a great job creating mating threats and taking away defensive squares for the white king. In Pool D the team from Suriname are on a roll. Not only have they have won all their matches (14/14): they are crushing the field, scoring 5 and 6 points in each encounter. In second place, and also very likely to qualify, stands Aruba (12/14), who are also scoring heavily. However, they were overtaken in the last round of the day after losing the key match to Suriname by a score of 4.5-1.5. The following position emerged on board four of the match: Alexandra Kaslan (Suriname) is playing White against Lesley Cielo from Aruba. If you want to improve your endgame calculation, try and solve it before checking out the solution! Should White exchange the minor piece and go into the pawn ending? Yes of course! The game continued 38.Bxg6! Kxg6 39.Ke5 Kg5 40.Kd6 Kh4 41.Kxc5 Kxh3 42.Kxc6 Kxg4 43.Kb6 h5 44.c5 h4 45.c6 h3 46.c7 h2 47.c8=Q+ and White got there first! Black resigned soon after. The third qualification spot will be heavily contested in tomorrow’s four final rounds. Ghana (10/14) has an extra point over three teams on 9/14: Cape Verde, Cameroon and Sao Tome and Principe. Puerto Rico has a lock on Pool E. With a clean 14/14 score, nothing short of a disaster would prevent them from winning the group and qualifying to the third division. Scoring 5-1 and 6-0 respectively against second and third place contenders Trinidad &Tobago (12/14) and Haiti (12/14) has left no doubt about the practical strength of the squad. With a 1943 ELO medium rating, the team headed by captain Francisco Cruz Arce is clearly one of the strongest in balanced in the entire division. The squad only lost 2 games out of 42 and with several players on 100%. Having to play with the first three teams, Cayman Islands (9/12) still has a chance to achieve direct qualification, but they would need to win at least two of the three matches. Definitely, a team to watch out for in the final four rounds in this pool. Division 4 will finish tomorrow, Sunday 22nd, with the final four rounds (8-11). The games will begin at 08.00 UTC in Pool A and end at 20.00 UTC in Pool E. The first three teams of each pool advance to the next stage, and, owing to Afghanistan’s withdrawal, the best of the five 4th-placed teams in Division 4, ranked according to the pool tie-breaks, will also be invited to participate in Division 3. Pairings of the rounds, live games, PGN files and other useful information can be found on the FIDE Online Olympiad website. Please note that all results and standings remain provisional until the fair play panel submit its daily report. The games can be followed online on www.chess.com (Events), presented by Wouter Bik, with expert analysis by WFM Alessia Santeramo, GM Roeland Pruijssers, WGM Jen Shahade and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili. Commentary can also be followed on FIDE’s own Youtube channel. Text: IM Michael Rahal, FIDE Press Officer About the tournament: Scheduled to take place from August 20th to September 15th, the 2021 FIDE Online Olympiad is a national teams event in which all federations affiliated with FIDE have the right to participate. Team’s consist of six players with a minimum of three female players and two junior players. Played online on Chess.com, the event features two main stages: the “Divisions stage”, and the Play-offs stage. All games are played with a 15 minutes + 5 seconds increment per move time control. The full schedule can be consulted here. Organisers: International Chess Federation (FIDE) Chess.com as the hosting platform Partners supporting the 2021 FIDE Online Olympiad: Shenzhen Longgang District Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism
FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss and Women’s Grand Swiss 2021: participant contracts
Dear players, Herewith we publish the official contracts of participants in FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss 2021 and FIDE Chess.com Women’s Grand Swiss 2021. To confirm your participation, you should sign and send the contract to the FIDE Secretariat (office@fide.com) no later than 12.00 CEST on August 30, 2021. Participant contract – FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss 2021 (pdf) (doc) Participant contract – FIDE Chess.com Women’s Grand Swiss 2021 (pdf) (doc) After the specified period, reserve players will be entitled to sign a contract (no later than 12.00 CEST on September 6, 2021). If you have decided not to participate in the tournament, we ask you to inform us about this decision so that we can invite a reserve player in advance. We would like to note that the current rules of Latvia for recognised sports competitions do not contain a requirement for quarantine upon entry into the country. However, as usual, it will be necessary to provide evidence of vaccination or present a fresh PCR test. At the time of writing, there are no requirements for playing in masks. However, the current state regulations may impose additional restrictions on people who do not have an official vaccination when visiting public places (this does not apply to the hotel or the playing area). In this regard, we would ask the participants who have been vaccinated with officially approved vaccines from the European Union — Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — to report this fact to the Organising Committee for the correct planning of its work.