Sergey Karjakin from Russia won the blitz tournament with 19.5 out of 30 games.Levon Aronian from Armenia finished with the same score, but he lost the direct match 0,5-1,5 and he had to deal with a silver medal.3rd place was shared by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov from Azerbaijan. The same tie-break score decided, a bronze medal went to the French man.
Last part of the tournament was very exciting, we could have seen a lot of changes on top of the crosstable. On the beginning of the day Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was leading, but after few rounds Le Quang Liem from Vietnam, who is well known as a succesful blitz player, had an advantage of a full point. Unexpectedly he lost few games in a row and after all he didn't manage to fight for a medal. The top position went back to Aronian, who had been leading after day 1.
At the end we have seen how tiring marathon it was. Even if blunders are part of blitz chess, it's hard to believe in what happened in some games:
Aronian - Grischuk
White is an exchange up, but... 48.Kh2?? Bxa7
Even after this blunder Aronian was fighting 50 moves more, but eventually he lost.
That was a chance to Karjakin to catch up the leader.
Ukrainian grandmaster won few games in a row with a lot of confidence.
Karjakin - Kamsky
White has better position, but black wants to castle queenside and his position is quite solid.Karjakin found a simple way to win immediately:
18.Bxh6! after Rxh6 19.Qd2 is attacking both rook on h6 and knight d7.
Kamsky tried 18...0-0-0 but after 19.Bg7 Rhe8 20.Ng5 black position is hopeless. White won in a miniature.
One of the most important games was round 29 between Maksim Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian. This time it was Aronian opponent who did unbelievable mistake:
20.Be3?? Qc8 and white is loosing a knight 0-1
In the last round after equal game Aronian drew vs Mamedyarov, in this situation Sergey Karjakin had to get a half point to held the first place.
Lets see an interesting endgame between him and Le Quang Liem:
Black is to move, Kc5 leads to a dead draw, but Karjakin didn't know the Aronian score, so he probably wanted to win. With less then half minute on the clock he decided to take a risk:60...Ke5?! miscalculation, now only white can try to win.
61.Kc4 Ke4 62.Kb5 Kxe3 63.Kxa5 Kf3 64.b4 Kxg3 65.b5 f4 66.b6 f3 67.b7 f2 68.b8Q+ Kg2
It's hard to believe but this position is a draw. black pawns f6 and h5 controls important squares on "g" file, the only way for white to improve is to take on f6:
69.Qb7+ Kg1 70.Qg7+ Kh2 71.Qxf6 Kg2 72.Qg5+ Kh2 73.Qe5+ Kg2 74.Qe4+ Kg1 75.Qe3 Kh1
Now white can't take on f2 because of stalemate. Le Quang Liem took the h5 pawn:
Qf3+ Kg1, Qxh5 f1=Q
White has an extra pawn, but can't avoid perpetual check.
That is the final position of this exciting game:
 Kc5 Qxh7, Qxh7 Kxh7Only kings on the board, it means Karjakin is a winner of blitz tournament.The last part of chess event is Basque System Tournament, we expect more emotions and interesting games! |
