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by Carlos Alberto Colodro
11/25/2020 – The knockout stage of the Skilling Open is about to begin after eight contestants qualified from a 16-player single round robin preliminary stage. Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura topped the standings with 9 of 15; Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Levon Aronian finished half a point behind; while five players tied at 8 points, with Teimour Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri advancing to the quarterfinals. | Photo: Levon Aronian
ChessBase 16 – Mega Package Edition 2021
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No fugitive leader
The usual suspects Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura finished atop the rankings in the Skilling Open preliminaries after Anish Giri finished days 1 and 2 as the sole leader. However, the shared round robin winners did not get a massive score as +3 was enough to finish ahead, not an impressive total given the fact that they played 15 rounds. Obviously, it was a highly contested competition everywhere.
If we look back at the leaderboard after 10 rounds, only one player made it to the top half of the table on day 3: Levon Aronian. The Armenian was the strongest in the last five rounds, scoring three wins and two draws to reach the quarterfinals. Ding Liren, who lost twice and tied the rest on Tuesday, was the only player to leave the top half of the table.
Aronian ended up sharing third to fifth place with Wesley So and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who played consistently throughout. Below these three players by +2, no less than five participants tied at 8 points, but only three made it to the quarterfinals: Teimour Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri had the best tiebreaker scores (number of points against players with the same overall score). Alireza Firouzja and Le Quang Liem were out of contention.
It was particularly painful to see Firouzja’s elimination as he had started the day with three impressive wins in a row. Back-to-back losses against Nakamura and Le meant that he would not go through to knockout.
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After losing twice on Monday and being faced with the need to come back on the final day of the preliminaries, Aronian had a brilliant performance in the final five rounds to reach the quarterfinals. As soon as he left, he defeated a hapless Jan-Krzysztof Duda:
The bishop’s opening and the Italian game
Studying the contents of this DVD and adding these openings to your repertoire will provide players with a very powerful tool for fighting 1 … e5, as the author’s practice clearly demonstrates.
The Armenian came out of a difficult midgame with a better position. Doubt, already in trouble, was wrong here with 29 … Rfd8, further weakening the f7 square. There he continued 30.Nc4 Qa6 31.d6 Nf4 32.Ne5:
White leaves his passer defenseless, but brings another piece to attack the weakness of f7. After 32 … Rxd6 33.Nxf7 Bxf7 34.Rxf7 + Kg6 White immediately pressured his opponent to quit by doubling down at the seventh rank:
35.Qc7 and Duda resigned.
Two rounds later, the Armenian ended the game against former co-leader Anish Giri in a similar fashion. This time, it was the rook that was placed on c7 to create a double attack along the seventh row:
Power Play 14 – Test your tactics
On this DVD, Grandmaster Daniel King:
● demonstrates typical tactical patterns
● shows how strong players use their tactical knowledge
● tests your tactical skills, but this is a test with a difference. Although the emphasis is on tactics, there are also positions that require a strategic solution. You don’t know what comes next …
Giri 32 … Ba6 quickly put the lid on the fight – 33.Bxa6 Qxa6 Y…
34.Rc7 Game over. Giri had just lost against Firouzja in the previous round. Despite being the leader at the end of the first two days of action, the Dutchman barely made it to the knockout stage after having safely drawn draws in his last two encounters.
As mentioned above, Firouzja started the day with three consecutive victories, beating Ding, Giri and Sergey Karjakin to climb to the shared first place with two rounds remaining. It was the online chess specialist Hikaru Nakamura who stopped the young man’s career:
Master class Vol. 2: Mihail Tal
On this DVD, Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Oliver Reeh and Karsten Müller present the 8. World Chess Champion in video lessons: his openings, his understanding of chess strategy, his ingenious game of endings and, finally, his combinations immortal.
Firouzja had indeed achieved a better position in the middle game. At this point, however, the game was dynamically balanced and White had more opportunities to create threats against the opposing king. Suddenly, Black hesitated decisively with 30 … Rfd8 though (30 … a5 was requested). Nakamura quickly found 31.Qxb7:
The black is lost after the forced 31 … Qxb7 32.Rxd8 + Kh7 33.Ng6, threatening mate on h8. Firouzja must now enter a lost horse ending with 33 … Qc8 34.Rxc8 Nxc8:
Black transferred his king to the queenside to stop the passer, while White calmly brought his monarch to e5, fully controlling the position. The resignation occurred on move 43.
