Biel, Round 10

A gorgeous day to you all, my chess friends! South Bend, Indiana is replete with sunshine and idyllic temperatures today - needless to say, perfect weather for sitting indoors and watching some good chess! And good chess we certainly saw - although this was the last round, we still saw some excellent struggles!

The game Svidler-Mamedyarov, though, was a completely understandable exception to this - with perhaps the tournament of his life sewn up, Mamedyarov had absolutely no reason to strive for anything more. Svidler, in theory, played an aggressive opening with the Mikenas English - however, Mamedyarov very adequately demonstrated the equalizing method against the newfangled 8. Bd3 line. 7...b6, 8...Bb7, and 9...Bxf3 was a very straightforward way of completely demolishing White's pawn structure - though White gains the bishop pair, without queens White has no adequate way of developing meaningful pressure. The game very logically liquidated towards an ending, and eventually we reached a completely drawn rook ending that found a repetition before the time control. Many hearty congratulations to Mamedyarov for an incredible result, and one can hope that the creative Azeri wizard parlays this result into a match with whoever the champion might be in two years.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave-Navara was a game with absolutely nothing at stake, but the two showed great courage and respect for the game by giving us a fantastic show. The players chose the typically quiet contours of the Italian Game - up to 9. Nf1 the players were following an MVL-Caruana game from June 22nd that MVL won. However, the Italian Game (like a lot of the new fangled slower Spanish structures) is incredibly flexible with variable moves orders. Things continued in a completely reasonable vein until 15...Ng5?!, which was ill timed and allowed White a savage attack against Black's damaged kingside pawn structure. MVL played with perfect timing, not allowing Navara a single opportunity to consolidate. 19. h4! very bravely allowed the obvious 19...g6?...which is completely losing! MVL forced 21...f6, which critically weakened the Black kingside. 24. Rad1 was a nice, quiet, and slow demonstration of force, but not the most incisive - however, this didn't fundamentally change the position from being completely winning for White. 27. Qh5 would have been the most devastating move, but White's 27. Re7 (while not the most accurate) was a beautiful "slow motion" attack - White's dual rooks on the seventh and the advanced pawns were a sufficient attacking force to absolutely strangle Black. 28...Rfe8 was Black's last opportunity to hold on desperately - 28...f5? left Black completely helpless against White's coordinated attack force. The piggies gorged themselves on the 7th, and Navara gave up the ghost just before the time control. Though this wasn't a great result for Navara, both players showed great courage and artistry - they went into a game with no stakes or importance and still treated us to a real fight. All praise to both gentlemen!

The final game to finish, a bit surprisingly, was Carlsen-Georgiadis - I was completely convinced that Carlsen would come into the game with the full wrath of the Lord, and I'm talking Raiders of the Lost Ark style. Goku in Super Saiyan 3 mode. Bruce Lee taking down Chuck Norris style. Old Testament wrath style - you get the picture. Carlsen certainly has this gear - his youth actually featured a lot of lovely berserker attacking chess (look up his games against Ibraev and Shaposhnikov if you want to see the "old Carlsen")! But today we did not see this gear - the game began with 1. e4 c5 2. Na3!??, a sometime hobby horse of Zvjaginsev (who also pioneered the lovely 1. c4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. g4!?, a line I love to trot out for aggressive English fun times). This opening is actually perfectly fine - it often finds its way back into a c3 Sicilian where the knight often finds a good home on c4 or c2. And so this game did - Carlsen made the choice to forfeit castling rights to retain more aggressive posts for his pieces, but Georgiadis wasn't troubled at all and developed quite naturally. Carlsen, quite out of character, actually chose a very poor time to transition to an ending - 16. Qc4?! and 17. dxe5?! were both somewhat serious positional errors, leaving Black with a very comfortable endgame with clear play against White's e pawn. 19...g5?! wasn't necessary, however - Black had a very comfortable game, and could simply have continued mobilization and play against White's overextended structure and passive White knight. Carlsen managed to develop some kingside counterplay...but remained passive! Nico played quite well and seemed to have a good blockade of White's weak pawns (Carlsen had all of his pawns on dark squares...same colour as Black's bishop!). Georgiadis seemed to miss the chance of his life - he could have liquidated to a bishop vs. knight ending that seems completely winning. However, he meandered, and chose to trade rooks a few moves later in a much less favourable moment. This was a dead draw...until Georgiadis completely blundered with 46...b3?? ! This was an astounding choice - virtually any other move kept a complete draw on the board! After 47. Nf3, Nico immediately resigned! Shades of Carlsen's previous round against Mamedyarov - a good fight with a balanced game, with instant resignation! A sad end for Nico - he was on the verge of drawing two games against the World Champion (and, had he been a bit more assertive in this game...perhaps better!) and giving his tournament a cheerful ending. As it stands, hopefully Nico thoroughly examines his welts and learns from his encounters with the world's best - he's obviously very talented, and I hope we see him absolutely destroying his next few tournaments.

So, to round up for the last time at Biel, Mamedyarov won a scintillating victory with 7.5/10. Magnus Carlsen took a bitter 2nd place with 6/10 (1.5 point gap!), MVL and Svidler tied for 3rd with 5.5/10, Navara took 5th with 4/10, and Georgiadis brought up the rear with a well bruised 1.5/10. Starting tomorrow I'll be starting more of a generalized focus on the Danzhou Super GM event and the British Championships, but for now enjoy the last few games of Biel and we'll see you tomorrow!