Thursday 6 December 2012

London Chess Classic - Round five

Today was finished fifth round of this year edition of London Chess Classic.
It seems that one of the favourites for the first place (at least after the first four rounds), Michael Adams is not anymore in the race.
He had advantage against Magnus Carlsen almost all the game, but somewhere in the time trouble he started to lose control, and just lost.
Besides Carlsen, there are one more player who are playing excellently.
Vladimir Kramnik played, according to me, the best game in the tournament so far.
He won against Luke McShane. Another two games had decisive results also.

Here are the results of the round number five:

Michael Adams - Magnus Carlsen      0-1
Vladimir Kramnik - Luke McShane    1-0
Gewain Jones - Wishy Anand            0-1
Judit Polgar - Hikaru Nakamura         0-1

Even Nakamura is still in the race, and all the details you can found in following tables:

London scoring with 3 points for a win















Classical scoring with 1 point for a win















As I said, today were all the games interesting and there were no draws.
We can start with the game between Polgar and Nakamura


Polgar defended well all the game, but when she almost reached a draw, she underestimated an attack on her king even in, what can be considered, quite a simplified position.
This is a good example of attacking possibilities in the endgames with opposite colour bishops.
Judit is on move, but she can do nothing to prevent  

1...Nf3+
and after forced:
2. Kh1, Bf1 
there is a mate Bg2#



This is the position from the game between Jones and Anand.
Jones played very far to optimistic in the opening and Anand could delivered the final blow already on the move 19.

19...Bxh3

...and if Jones takes the bishop with a rook (otherwise it is a fork on f3) than Anand can jump with one of his knight on c4, followed by Rxf1 with a winning attack.

20. Be3, Qc8!

and everything was over!


The game of the day and so far of the tournament was played between Kramnik and McShane.
Alredy in the opening Kramnik sacrificed an exchange but McShane did not took it.
In the position on the diagram Kramnik could just take a pawn on c4 with one of his knights but he played:

20. Rxc4!

Excellent exchange sacrifice. Kramnik got full control on light squares and won convincingly.
All the games are possible to see in the chess viewer.


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