Biel, Round 9

Salutations, my chess friends! Today marked the penultimate round of Biel, and one colossal jostle (as an aside, that was the original idea for the name of WrestleMania - I seriously doubt Colossal Jostle would have had staying power) kept our attention for the entirety of the round. The two other games seemed to acquiesce to this and kept a quiet profile to allow maximum viewing efficiency.

The first game to find a resolution was Navara-Svidler, a game that seemed to have peaceful intentions from the very start. Navara chose the English Four Knights with the trendy 6. a3, and Svidler responded with 6...Bc5, a move known to have more tranquil resolutions than 6...Qb6 or 6...d5. Starting with 11...d5, the players seemed to be on a devoted quest to find the most efficient methods of liquidating to a draw. Honestly, there's not much to say about this game - I don't begrudge either gentleman an extra rest day, as they've otherwise provided us with excellent chess. A game like this doesn't do much to dispel the English's reputation as a boring opening, though...

The next game to finish was Georgiadis-Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, which featured a bit of a hybrid Schlechter Slav (full credit to a comment earlier from a reader - my apologies for missing the second H!). MVL made a few odd choices, marooning his knight on a6 before the typical ...a5 (those two moves are a quite normal combination for this structure), and Georgiadis established a slightly more comfortable position. And this time...he didn't go haywire! Georgiadis played the straightforward 15. Ne5, and MVL chose to liquidate to an ending where White has the two bishops in exchange for doubled e pawns - these, however, aren't a debilitating pawn structure feature, and Georgiadis had a very comfortable ending. Nico might have missed a couple of methods of more strenuously testing MVLs barricades, but the game continued in logical fashion the whole way - we eventually reached a completely equal rook and bishop ending where the players agreed to a draw just after the time control. This is the sort of play Nico is capable of - no self destructs, just good chess against one of the best in the world!

But finally, of course, the Game of the Day (in all capitals, bold, with attendant streamers and razzle dazzle) was Mamedyarov-Carlsen. There's an interesting psychology at work here - Carlsen, with Black, could have easily declared himself sated with 2nd place and found an easy draw (which, presumably, Mamedyarov would have been perfectly happy with). But you don't reach the top of any summit by being pleased with 2nd best, and Carlsen has the sort of pride that comes with being the best - the course of the game, though not incendiary, showed that he had belligerent intent. Carlsen issued the King's Indian (!), and Mamedyarov chose the Fianchetto as his weapon of the day. If this had psychological intent, I think it's a fantastic choice - Mamedyarov plays something solid and keeps the onus on Carlsen to keep winning chances alive in the position. After 7...Nc6, Mamedyarov had the chance to issue 8. d5, which has a truly historic pedigree with some incredibly fiery games in its history. Mamedyarov, however, chose the relatively rare 8. e3, which (aside from the objective value of the move, which looks fine) strikes me as another good practical choice - solid, and again passes the ball to Carlsen's court to find an imbalance. 8...d5 certainly qualified as an imbalancing move, and an absolute rarity in my database - I have a game from 1954, and a game from 2017 between an 1880 and a 1400. So, virgin territory! Mamedyarov handled this surprise very well to a point, but seemed to have chances for a serious edge - 14...Nb4 was somewhat dangerous, and Shakh could have simply replied with 15. e4! with dangerous ideas of a quick central crush. Mamedyarov chose 15. Bxb4, and the game went into typical Gruenfeld territory - Carlsen owned the bishop pair in exchange for White's central space. Though this made for a perfectly equal game...Carlsen had a game to win! The game was quite logical until 26...Qf8?! - here, finally, Carlsen seemed to make an artificial move for the sake of keeping life in the position. Mamedyarov responded precisely and snapped up the b pawn - though Carlsen still had play for the pawn, Mamedyarov clearly was in the driver's seat with no chances of a loss. But here...we essentially went into a whole other game. After three hours of looking over this ending, I actually had to remind myself where this position came from! Mamedyarov went over to the offensive, slowly probing the kingside - here, the opposite coloured bishops actually favour him, granting increased chances of a successful assault. Both a pawns were liquidated along with the queens, and Mamedyarov could have easily offered a draw somewhere around here...but with an extra pawn, a kingside space edge and good chances of an attack, Shakh decided to press forward for glory. I think 40...gxh5?! (the dreaded last move of the time control!) wasn't necessarily losing, but made it practically difficult for Carlsen - he might have assessed most of the complications coming from the f pawn pushing, but not his full range of defensive resources. And push it did - 41...f6 was pretty much forced, and White gained a very dangerous protected passer (which not only has designs of queen making - f7 can be a dangerous outpost square for an attack!). This seemingly simply ending was host to an incredible gamut of defensive and counterattacking ideas that all seem to perfectly keep the balance for Black - one resource I found for Black was honestly enough to leave me laughing for 30 seconds flat (you'll know it when you see it). But 56...Bc1?? was a colossal blunder, simply allowing the White pawn to queen! After 57. e7, Carlsen instantly resigned! A shocking end to an incredibly hard fought game where Mamedyarov simply proved to be in a better psychological position than Carlsen - despite reaching an ending where most tournament leaders would be perfectly happy to cinch a draw, Mamedyarov kept the complications going when they felt they were on his side, and Carlsen was the one to blink first. All praise to the Azeri genius for a perhaps career defining win!

So with this tremendous round, Mamedyarov has clinched tournament victory with 7/9 - this doesn't impart how incredible his play and results have been in this tournament. +5 (five wins) with no losses against a field including Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Peter Svidler, and David Navara...and putting a loss on all of these gentlemen besides Svidler! This strikes me as one of the best tournament results of our very young century - the only tournament result of recent memory that strikes me as being of equal or better caliber is Fabiano Caruana's 8.5/10 undefeated victory at the 2014 Sinquefield Cup. Caruana's tournament victory was over a field that included Carlsen, Aronian, MVL, Nakamura, and Topalov - perhaps Mamedyarov's victory is slightly marred by the inclusion of Georgiadis, but Mamedyarov can't be blamed for a factor he can't control. An amazing performance from Shakhriyar, and one hopes he can parlay this success into the next Candidates tournament.

The final round seems somewhat pro forma - I hope I'm wrong, but the game Svidler-Mamedyarov doesn't seem fated to go very long. MVL takes the White pieces against Navara where perhaps we might see a full game simply for the art of chess, and Carlsen takes the White pieces against Georgiadis where you might expect Carlsen to rip the poor Swiss lad apart just to assuage his disappointed feelings. I'm fully expecting Carlsen to read out the Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25:17 before the game. I'll be spending most of my analytical efforts on Mamedyarov-Carlsen, and we'll see you tomorrow for the final round of Biel!

http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2018/8/1/Game617423531.html