Tuesday, July 1, 2008

CHESSDOM: CARLSEN WINS AEROSVIT

The last round game between Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen was a short but exciting affair. Karjakin wanted to avoid Sicilian Dragon this time and opened with 1.d4, to which Carlsen replied with Gruenfeld Indian defence. White sacrificed a pawn to force dark-squared Bishops exchange and stormed against Black weakened King. Carlsen had to defend for a while, but after the Queen's trade, the resulting position was roughly equal ending and players agreed to draw on 29th move.

After the starting two points from two rounds and disastrous streak in the middle of the tournament, Alexei Shirov won the last two games and reached 50% score. Andrei Volokitin found the key against Berlin Ruy Lopez lock and beat Evgeny Alekseev. He earlier lost in the same variation to compatriot Pavel Eljanov. See GM Mikhail Golubev's excellent game analysis on the official website. Hans Arild Runde updated his "Measure Up" column by including Foros Aerosvit results into July rating list projection. Henrik Carlsen provided plenty of interesting information on his blog.

Round 11 results:
Svidler, Peter ½ - ½ Van Wely, Loek
Ivanchuk, Vassily 1 - 0 Eljanov, Pavel
Karjakin, Sergey ½ - ½ Carlsen, Magnus
Volokitin, Andrei 1 - 0 Alekseev, Evgeny
Jakovenko, Dmitry ½ - ½ Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter
Onischuk, Alexander 0 - 1 Shirov, Alexei

Final standings:
1. Magnus Carlsen 2765 - 8.0
2. Vassily Ivanchuk 2740 - 7.0
3-4. Sergey Karjakin 2732 and Pavel Eljanov 2687 - 6.0
5-7. Dmitry Jakovenko 2711, Alexei Shirov 2740 and Andrei Volokitin 2684 - 5.5
8-10. Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu 2684, Peter Svidler 2746 and Evgeny Alekseev 2711 - 5.0
11. Loek Van Wely 2676 - 4.0
12. Alexander Onischuk 2664 - 3.5

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