Day 2: A tough day for the top seeds

Written by Aditya Pai on 19 April 2019.

The second wave of norm aspirants hit the top-ranked grandmasters of the Grenke Chess Open on Friday morning and this time, it managed to upset the top seed of the event Etienne Bacrot. Besides, many others had to press for long hours and, in some cases, even wait for a miracle of sorts to reach victory. As the day progressed more casualties were witnessed as to GMs like Gata Kamsky, Alexey Sarana and Borki Predojevic signed peace in the following round.

The enormous playing hall | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Jeroen van den Berg, tournament director of the chess festival in Wijk aan Zee, was very impressed after his visit to the venue. Soon after his visit to the venue he took to Twitter to share his impressions of the GRENKE Chess Open.

Truly impressed by what I saw at my first visit in #Karlsruhe at @GRENKEChess ... Great achievement for the organisation to bring so many chess fans together! pic.twitter.com/cLJuf1mExS

— Jeroen Van Den Berg (@Jvdbergchess) April 19, 2019

In the premier encounter of the morning round GM Bacrot, as black, did not manage to eke out any advantage for the most part of his game against FM Robert Stein of Germany. As the Bogo Indian essayed by the Frenchman slowly steered into a heavy piece endgame, the path to victory seemed bleak. Bacrot’s active pieces did win him a pawn on the flank, but his rook wasn’t ideally placed to facilitate its promotion. The struggle lasted 149 moves before the white king was stalemated.

18-year-old Robert Stein managed to hold the top-seeded Etienne Bacrot to a draw in round 2 | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

In addition to Bacrot, Grandmasters Tamasz Banusz, Samvel Ter-Sahakyan, Vitaliy Bernadskiy and Aleksey Goganov were also held to draws by lower rated opponents.

For Gata Kamsky it took a good five hours to bring home the full point playing white in a Ruy Lopez. Like his previous round game, this one also featured an ‘a’ pawn that decided matters. Sacrificing a pawn for the initiative, the American grandmaster managed to get his pieces flooding into the enemy camp by the time the first time control had been reached. And once he had plucked off on a6, he managed to breeze through the technicalities effortlessly.

Perhaps the most dramatic game of the round was the thirteenth board clash between Iranian GM Amin Tabatabaei and Davide Arcuti. The duo had rolled their bones until the seventh hour of play. Tabatabaei was desperately trying to pull off a miracle in a pawnless two bishops versus knight endgame while Arcuti remained accurate in his defence.

At one point, the latter asked the arbiter for the move count in order to enforce the fifty-move draw rule. However, the arbiter, bound by the laws of chess, could only tell that he could not reveal this information. Soon afterwards, Arcuti ended up getting his knight trapped, and Tabatabaei’s two bishops reigned supreme. After the game, it turned out that Arcuti had indeed reached the 50 move mark. Explaining the situation, the arbiter said that Arcuti had only asked how many moves remained until the fifty-move mark was reached; he did not claim a draw. And as an arbiter, he could not have intervened until the 75^th move.

Round three began within an hour following this and, in no time, it was noticed that Alireza Firouzja was missing from his board. As per the pairing, he was to play Or Bronstein of Israel; and as has been seen in several tournaments, the Iranian player decided to forfeit his game against an Israeli rather than facing sanctions back in Iran. The forfeit means that Firouzja who had a perfect 2/2 score until this round will lag a full point behind the leaders going into the fourth round.

Firouzja during his first round game | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Like in the previous round, the top board matchup once again saw a top-ranked Grandmaster sign peace with his lower rated opponent. Gata Kamsky, who had the black pieces against FM Emil Schmidek, repeated the Sicilian Kan, which he had deployed previously in round one. Following an early trade of queens, Kamsky decided not to press too hard in the ensuing middle game and agreed to sign peace 37 moves into the game.

Following Etienne Bacrot, Gata Kamsky (left) also conceded a draw to an 18-year-old FIDE Master | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Anton Korobov, in the meanwhile, got a pleasant position quite early in his Gruenfeld Defence game. As white, he managed to exploit Niels Ondersteijn’s clumsily placed knights after the latter erred on the sixteenth turn and got his pieces entangled miserably on the eighth rank. Korobov soon won an exchange and managed to force resignation by the 39^th turn.  

On board 6, GM Alexey Sarana was facing the talented Malaysian teenager, Lye Lik Zang. The two discussed a Slav Defence wherein pieces were traded at regular intervals. By the time the first time control was reached, Sarana decided to call it a day by repeating the position.

One board below, Daniel Fridman played an exciting Queen’s Gambit against IM Malte Colpe on board 7. Players castled on opposite wings and energetically stormed the enemy king.

Position after 35.h6

Fridman decided to give up the exchange here with 35…Rc3. After the immediate capture of the rook, 36.Bc3, there followed 36…Qxc3, and the bishop suddenly had nowhere to go. After white’s 37.Rd1 Nxd3 came anyway as the knight is immune from capture on account of mates on b2 and c1.

After three rounds, forty-five players still share the tournament lead with a perfect 3/3 score. Round 4 will begin at 9:00 AM CEST on Easter Saturday once again at the Kongresszentrum here in Karlsruhe Germany and will feature some exciting Grandmaster duels. Pairings of the top ten boards can be found below.

The video team of the GRENKE Chess Open shoots numerous videos every day. The interviews and impressions of the events in Karsruhe can be viewed on the YouTube channel GRENKE Chess.