[ad_1]
GM Teimour Radjabov won the Airthings Masters on Sunday. The Azerbaijani grandmaster beat GM Levon Aronian in one more game and tied twice for the top prize of $ 60,000. GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave came third after beating GM Daniil Dubov in his second match.
Aronian vs. Radjabov 1-2
The match began with an incredible game in which Aronian had to sacrifice a rook with check, similar to the famous 1960 Spassky-Bronstein game used in the 1963 James Bond film “From Russia With Love.” In the opening scene of that movie, we see “Kronsteen” and “MacAdams” at the “Venice International Grand Masters Championship”.
It’s the end of the Spassky-Bronstein game shown (with the white pawns on d4 and c5 eliminated, by the way), but the star move of that game is 15.Nd6.
Aronian knew that game, of course, and mentioned it in his post-game interview: “I think I got really excited in game one when I got to sacrifice the rook with check. It reminded me of the game Spassky won against Bronstein in the Gambit of King. Basically it is something similar: you also give your rook with check, and then there is no defense. “
“The first game was really bad, really bad,” Radjabov said. “I don’t know if I had lost it if I could have somehow returned, but I was very happy that I saved it.”
Despite Radjabov’s comments and the fact that he ended in a draw, this is one of the first candidates for the Game of the Year 2021:
As he needed to win this best of four to force a tiebreaker, Aronian started taking risks from his first game as Black. This time, playing Grunfeld from the black side, he sacrificed a pawn on move 21 as a way to avoid a replay of a move, but never got it back. Radjabov’s technique was excellent:
Bringing a rook finish to a draw, Radjabov secured the final half point he needed to win the tournament and the top prize of $ 60,000. Aronian earned $ 40,000 for second place.
It was a hot streak Ponchik! Next time we will win it all, I promise! Thanks guys for all the support!#Second place #Party #Champs #PonchikForPremier pic.twitter.com/ddsGn6bLaS
– Levon Aronian (@LevAronian) January 3, 2021
Radjabov was quite excited for the camera, holding his head in his hands for a while.
“Today has been very hard,” he said. “Trying to maintain focus and concentration until the end requires a lot of emotions as well, to maintain this form of calm that I am trying to produce, not to show whether or not I am happy with my position. It took so much energy; I am completely exhausted.” .
Again we see Radjabov showing that although he is not playing in many tournaments, he is still an absolutely superior grandmaster. He also made this clear when he won the 2019 FIDE World Cup. The Azerbaijani denied ever retiring from chess, saying:
“I played this 2013 Candidates Tournament and I started to lose every game against the best players, so I said: Should I stop it, brutally? I just stopped playing. That was the only way to proceed because I was playing the super tournaments, I I was lacking confidence after the Candidates, so I tried to take a kind of break and work on my chess. I completely changed my repertoire, started playing Berlin and so on. I just played with the king’s Indians and Sicilians and stuff, and every now and then with the king’s gambit so [coach GM Vladimir] Chuchelov said this is not the way, you have to be a fashionable professional chess player, and I just changed my style and tried to play in some official events. “
It is a shame that Radjabov was unable to demonstrate his skills in the 2020-2021 Candidates. With the pandemic still around the world, his decision not to play again in March is even more understandable.
For now, you can celebrate. In fact, he said he planned to celebrate “until morning,” and also catch up on New Years celebrations with friends he had skipped over.
Thank you so much for the support guys! It means a lot to me! Time to celebrate a bit … #apartments #Champs
– Teimour Radjabov (rajachess) January 3, 2021
Dubov vs. Vachier-Lagrave 1.5-2.5
After spoiling his 2-0 lead the other day, Dubov also had no chances in the second match. In fact, in the first game he returned to a winning position from the opening on line 3.Bb5 + which he continues to play. The engine finds killer moves for White in several cases, all based on getting the rook to a1 as fast as possible:
After a draw in game two, Dubov leveled the score in game three. In the fourth game, he adopted his own motto: “If your pieces attack, you just have to attack back,” a little too seriously on move 27, and that decided the game.
The fans watched a highly entertaining match with only one draw in eight games, but Vachier-Lagrave’s perspective was a bit different:
“I think there were a lot of unnecessary mistakes on my part that made the games at least entertaining. I’m not sure they’re interesting, but definitely entertaining. I don’t know, I just started off so bad, and I managed to remind myself at the end of the day, but it didn’t really feel like a good chess day. ”
The next super tournament will be a return to chess on the board. The Tata Steel Chess tournament begins on Saturday, January 16 and will have live coverage again produced by Chess.com. Here is all the information.
All games day 9
The Champions Chess Tour Airthings Masters ran from December 26 to January 3. The preliminary phase was a fast round robin of 12 players (15 | 10). The top eight players advanced to a six-day knockout that consisted of two days of four-game flash games, progressing to blitz (5 | 3) and armageddon tiebreaks (White had five minutes, Black four without increment) only if the knockout match was tied after the second round. The prize fund was $ 200,000 with $ 60,000 for first place.
Previous reports:
[ad_2]
