Only the fittest

The recent Chess World Cup tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk qualified easily as one of the longest chess tournaments ever organized this year. 

When the schedule of this event was announced earlier this year, I felt a bit dizzy just to think that here was a tournament that would span 24 playing days, from Aug 28 until Sep 20.

Don’t ever think of chess as a game of ease and leisure, that everything a player does is to sit down at the chessboard and (a) flex his brain cells, and (b) move his arm muscles only. No, playing chess requires one to be fit both mentally and physically. Just ask any of the good chess players, even our local ones, and they will tell you that they do require a measure of physical fitness. 

Maybe it doesn’t mean that much when one plays in one-day chess events but when you have a tournament that spans anything from five to eight days, boy, there is already the physical strain which can set in rather quickly. 

But I’m digressing a bit. As for the Chess World Cup, anyone taking part in this event would not only have to be fit but the player must be super-fit to survive the course of 24 days.

Of course, I’m only referring to the ones that progressed through this knock-out event from Round One right until the final Round Seven, and there were only four of them that survived till this stage of this marathon event. The rest dropped out along the way as they were eliminated.

When the Chess World Cup began in late August, it began with 128 players from throughout the world. Many had qualified from the World Chess Federation’s zonal tournaments or the continental chess championships that had been organized some time earlier. Some had qualified by virtue of their international ratings or their positions as losing finalists in the last Chess World Cup or women’s world champion or world junior champions.

In any case, this event began as a huge potpourri of chess players of all race and creed, old and young, the very strong and the not-so-strong. The regulations were simple. In each of the first six rounds, the paired players would play two games at normal regulation time control and if the results were tied, they would proceed to play two games at rapidchess time control followed by blitz games, if necessary. For the final round, there would be four normal regulation games instead of two, followed by the play-off games.

So the field was halved to 64 players at the end of the first round, halved again to 32 players at the end of the second round, and further reduced to 16 players by the time the third round ended.

By this time, the real contest in the Chess World Cup could be considered to have really started. These were the remaining 16 players who were now seriously eyeing the three qualification spots for the World Chess Federation’s Candidates stage of the 2013 world chess championship: Lazaro Bruzon, Leinier Dominguez, Vugar Gashimov, Alexander Grischuk, Vassily Ivanchuk, Dmitry Jakovenko, Gata Kamsky, David Navara, Peter Heine Nielsen, Judit Polgar, Ruslan Ponomariov, Vladimir Potkin, Teimour Radjabov, Peter Svidler, Bu Xiangzhi and Yaroslav Zherebukh.

The fourth round saw the field whittled down to eight when Bruzon, Dominguez, Jakovenko, Kamsky, Nielsen, Potkin, Bu and Zherebukh were eliminated and already, the favourites to qualify were beginning to emerge. 

Of the eight, the firm favourites to progress further in the competition were Svidler, Ponomariov, Ivanchuk and Grischuk and they did this by beating Polgar, Gashimov, Radjabov and Navara respectively in the fifth round or the quarterfinals round.

The sixth round or the semifinals round saw Svidler paired against Ponomariov and Ivanchuk paired against Grischuk. These were very tense contests because the winners of the two matches would of course qualify for the Candidates stage regardless of how they played in the seventh round. The losers would have to fight it out for the last remaining place and the pressure on them would be BIG.

Svidler was the first to qualify after having disposed of Ponomariov in two games. Grischuk took longer, having to beat Ivanchuk in six games. The highlight of this round was Ivanchuk’s shock blunder in the third play-off game. 

Grischuk, who was in his customary time trouble, had allowed his clock to run down to the last three seconds before he executed his move. Ivanchuk thought that he was almost on the verge of winning and walked right into the trap that his opponent had laid for him. His first blunder was to lose a knight and then the second blunder was to lose his rook. All in two consecutive moves.

When Grischuk captured the rook, Ivanchuk was so shocked and distressed that he resigned the game immediately and left the table with his face hidden by his hands. This was clearly a man in great shock.

And so finally, the seventh round or the final round arrived. However, there was no big drama this time. It was like an anti-climax. Svidler wrapped up the Chess World Cup by winning the first game and then giving Grischuk no chance at all of equalising the match. The fight for third and fourth places was more intense but Ivanchuk had by then recovered sufficiently to beat Ponomariov and secure the last qualifying position. 

Up next

DATCC Blitz Sunday

The DATCC will hold a blitz tournament at the Wilayah Complex this Sunday. A prize fund of RM500 is on offer, More information available from Kaber Azzad (012.6178624, info@chess-malaysia.com).

 

DATCC team open

The first round of the fourth DATCC team open team chess tournament will be played at the Wilayah Complex in Kuala Lumpur starting Oct 22. Thereafter, the next seven rounds will be played on consecutive Tuesdays, and the final round on Dec 24. Entry fee is RM400 per team with a maximum of 10 players in each team. Total prize money is RM6,000. More information available from http://datcchess.blogspot.com.