The Grand Slam at Bilbao started off on a cautious note despite the soccer scoring pattern of 3-1-0 for win/draw/loss. After two rounds, the only winner is Magnus Carlsen who beat Levon Aronyan in the first round.
Despite the scoring bias and the application of Sofia rules, five games out of six were grafted out. In the only decisive effort so far, Carlsen beat off an optimistic attack by Aronyan and converted a queen ending.
Anand sportingly turned down a likely win when he agreed to split a position against Vassilly Ivanchuk in round 1. Ivanchuk was slightly better in the endgame but he had 22 seconds left (the control is 40 moves in 90 minutes and 60 minutes till the end of game with no increment in sudden death) versus Anand’s 25 minutes.
The Ukrainian GM had forgotten about the time control specifics! A draw requires not just the agreement of the players but also of the arbiter, who agreed to let this go despite the fact that there were queens and rooks on board.
The event is drawing a lot of local as well as global attention because it’s being played in a glass cage in an open location. There is a daily blitz tournament offering Euros 300 to the winner and a “Grand Prix” prize of Euros 1,500 to the participant who logs the most points. http://www.bilbaofinalmasters.com/ is offering live coverage and several other sites have commentary as well (in Russian, German and Spanish).
In the women’s world Championship at Nalchik, the withdrawal of 11 players led to chaos in pairing the first couple of rounds. They were not replaced in the 64-player knockout.
The withdrawals happened late and replacements would have run into visa/travel issues. As a result, there were walkovers in both first and second rounds.
Defending champion Xu Yuhua was knocked out in the biggest upset so far. Both Koneru Humpy, who is top-rated, and Dronavalli Harika, fresh from the World Juniors triumph, are still in contention in the round of 16.
From here onwards, the mini match format really becomes stressful. Between almost equally rated players, the chance of matches heading into tie breaks at accelerated controls is very high.
THE DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY, (Ivanchuk Vs Carlsen, Bilbao 2008) is a good example that a short draw can be hard-fought and exciting. The material balance has been disrupted since move 15 when black made the thematic Dragon sacrifice of 15.-Rxc3. Now there's a threat of grabbing the bishop b3 and prosecuting a successful attack. But white found the spectacular 19.Bxf7+! Rxf7 20.e5 and now black responded with 20.-- Nd5! 21.e6 Nxc3+ 22.Kc1 Bxe6 23.Nxe6 Qa5 24.Qxg4 Nxa2+ 25.Kb2 Qc3+ 26.Kxa2 Qxc2+ 27.Ka1 Qc3+ 28.Kb1 Qb3+ 29.Ka1 Qc3+ (0.5-0.5).
