Poikovsky, Round 1: Five Decisive Results

Now that's the way to have a chess tournament start! And it wasn't due to mismatched pairings, either, nor did White win every game (though four out of five ain't bad, to adapt an old song).

Dmitry Jakovenko won a pawn and ground down Vladislav Artemiev. Artemiev should have played 20...Qc7, and although White could still snag a pawn after, say, 21.Rf1 a5 22.Nxd4 Nxd4 23.Rxd4 Rxd4 24.Qxd4, Black would have full compensation after 24...Rd8 25.Qe3 Qc5. In fact, he probably just regains the pawn: 26.Qxc5 bxc5 followed by ...Rd4 seems to do the trick.

Emil Sutovsky would have enjoyed excellent compensation for a pawn had Vladislav Kovalev played 23...Nxe4. Instead, Kovalev's 23...Nd7 left him with a lousy position, and he was completely lost a few moves later. Sutovsky wasn't in any rush to win, nor was Kovalev particularly eager to resign, but the win was inevitable and happened after White's 80th move.

Black's one win came in Boris Gelfand vs. Ian Nepomniachtchi. Gelfand sacrificed a pawn in the English, and he was apparently surprised early on because he thought for 41 minutes on move 16 and another 11-12 minutes on his next move. The result of these deep thinks was a middlegame with no compensation. Black consolidated and then some, and shortly before the time control he won a piece to boot. After the players made their 40th moves, Gelfand resigned.

In the London System variation 1.d4 d5 2.Bf4 Nf6 3.e3 e6 4.Nd2 c5 5.c3 Be7 6.h3 Bd6 White would never dream of playing 7.Bg3, allowing Black to wreck White's pawns, but in the game between Anton Korobov and Vladimir Fedoseev something similar happened. There was a key difference, of course, but it was still somewhat surprising. The opening was a Torre Attack, and it took ...h6 and ...g5 to push White's bishop back to g3. The exchange occurred there, and White was even willing to sac a pawn or two for play down the f-file and an attack. Fedoseev declined the opportunity to play 13...Qxg3, but he had a lousy position all the same. I'm not sure if he lost on time trying to make his 38th move or gave up out of disgust with his position, which was thoroughly lost in any case.

Finally, Gujrathi Vidit convincingly defeated Victor Bologan in a nice game with some simple but attractive sacrifices that highlighted the dark square poverty Black suffered after 22...g5?

Games here, on Chess24.