FIDE Grand Prix 2014-2015

[Mick Norris]

Rest day tomorrow

Round 5 on 2015/05/19
SNO. NAME RTG RES. NAME RTG SNO.
3 GM Grischuk Alexander 2780 – GM Gelfand Boris 2744 12
4 GM Caruana Fabiano 2803 – GM Jobava Baadur 2699 2
5 GM Jakovenko Dmitry 2738 – GM Vachier-Lagrave Maxime 2754 1
6 GM Karjakin Sergey 2753 – GM Tomashevsky Evgeny 2749 11
7 GM Nakamura Hikaru 2799 – GM Svidler Peter 2734 10
8 GM Giri Anish 2776 – GM Dominguez Perez Leinier 2734 9

[Chris Rice]

Dmitry Jakovenko, beat MVL after a terrible oversight by the French player that cost him a pawn. Karjakin ground down Evgeny Tomashevsky in a marathon game that lasted seven hours and 99 moves. The remaining four games were drawn.

Standings after 5 rounds:
1 Caruana 3.5
2= Dominguez, Karjakin, and Svidler 3
5= Gelfand, Grischuk, Nakamura, and Jakovenko 2.5
9= Giri, Jobava, Tomashevsky 2
12 Vachier-Lagrave 1.5

The GP "as it stands" table shows Caruana way out in front but its getting exciting for the other qualifying place with Tomashevsky getting preciously close to blowing it:

1 Caruana 400, 2 Tomashevsky 282, 3 Nakamura 272 4 Karjakin 270 5= Gelfand, Mamedyarov, Jakovenko 235 8 Svidler 215

Round 06
Gelfand, Boris 2744 Dominguez, Leinier 2734
Svidler, Peter 2734 Giri, Anish 2776
Tomashevsky, Evgeny 2749 Nakamura, Hikaru 2799
Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime 2754 Karjakin, Sergey 2753
Jobava, Baadur 2699 Jakovenko, Dmitry 2738
Grischuk, Alexander 2780 Caruana, Fabiano 2803

[Mick Norris]

Tomashevsky - Nakamura looks a key game

[Barry Sandercock]

Jobava's games are usually interesting. Todays opening 1.B3 makes a change.

[Roger de Coverly]

Todays opening 1.B3 makes a change.

I fear that all he is doing is demonstrating that it's not terribly good.

The story so far

1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 Nf6 4. h3 d5 5. Bb5 Bd6 6. Nf3 Qe7 7. d4 exd4 8. Qxd4 Bd7

[Phil Neatherway]

but h3 is a waste of time, I should have thought. Why not play 4. Bb5?

[MartinCarpenter]

I wouldn't try and work Jobava's openings out too carefully, else you'd have to wonder (say) why he wanted to let Gelfand have that protected passed pawn on c3 a few rounds back

He makes them stick fairly well though Did get a big time advantage out of it this time round (and against Gelfand) and to have survived in general.

[Roger de Coverly]

Why not play 4. Bb5?

The normal line is that Black meets this by 4. .. Bd6. I expect there's a reason for wasting a move to provoke .. d5, we may have to wait for the game to be annotated to find out why. There's perhaps a threat in a loose sense of playing a Basman style set up with g4 and Bg2 if Black doesn't do anything.

[Mick Norris]

Round 6 (May 20, 2015)
Svidler, Peter - Giri, Anish 1-0 83 D38 QGD Ragozin
Gelfand, Boris - Dominguez Perez, Leinier ½-½ 63 E11 Bogo Indian Defence
Jobava, Baadur - Jakovenko, Dmitry ½-½ 46 A01 Larsen Opening
Grischuk, Alexander - Caruana, Fabiano 0-1 75 D37 QGD 5.Bf4
Tomashevsky, Evgeny - Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ 30 E06 Catalan
Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime - Karjakin, Sergey 0-1 38 C65 Ruy Lopez Berlin

[Mick Norris]

Standings

After Round 6

RANK SNO. NAME RTG FED PTS SB
1 4 GM Caruana Fabiano 2803 ITA 4½ 11,50
2 10 GM Svidler Peter 2734 RUS 4 12,00
3 6 GM Karjakin Sergey 2753 RUS 4 10,25
4 9 GM Dominguez Perez Leinier 2734 CUB 3½ 11,25
5 7 GM Nakamura Hikaru 2799 USA 3 9,50
6 12 GM Gelfand Boris 2744 ISR 3 7,50
7 5 GM Jakovenko Dmitry 2738 RUS 3 6,00
8 2 GM Jobava Baadur 2699 GEO 2½ 7,25
9 11 GM Tomashevsky Evgeny 2749 RUS 2½ 6,75
10 3 GM Grischuk Alexander 2780 RUS 2½ 6,75
11 8 GM Giri Anish 2776 NED 2 6,75
12 1 GM Vachier-Lagrave Maxime 2754 FRA 1½ 4,00

[Mick Norris]

Round 7 on 2015/05/21
SNO. NAME RTG RES. NAME RTG SNO.
4 GM Caruana Fabiano 2803 – GM Gelfand Boris 2744 12
5 GM Jakovenko Dmitry 2738 – GM Grischuk Alexander 2780 3
6 GM Karjakin Sergey 2753 – GM Jobava Baadur 2699 2
7 GM Nakamura Hikaru 2799 – GM Vachier-Lagrave Maxime 2754 1
8 GM Giri Anish 2776 – GM Tomashevsky Evgeny 2749 11
9 GM Dominguez Perez Leinier 2734 – GM Svidler Peter 2734 10

[Chris Rice]

Why not play 4. Bb5?

The normal line is that Black meets this by 4. .. Bd6. I expect there's a reason for wasting a move to provoke .. d5, we may have to wait for the game to be annotated to find out why. There's perhaps a threat in a loose sense of playing a Basman style set up with g4 and Bg2 if Black doesn't do anything.

Regarding 4 h3!? the annotations by Jobava were not exactly enlightening “I found [this] before the Grand Prix. I thought I had to try it at least once. It is not such a stupid move as it seems,” Jobava argued." and that was basically all he said.

He did well to draw the game though and one assumes a silicon friend of his might have suggested White's 4th.

Even better prep was shown by Grishuk v Caruana after 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. d4 d5 3. c4 e6 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bg5 h6 he went 6. Bf4 O-O 7. e3 Nbd7 8. g4!? the Russian GM wasn't happy with his preparation at all: “I played a new move, and after the very first reply [8...dxc4] I could not remember what to do.”


http://www.chess.com/news/fabiano-carua ... y-mansiysk

[Tim Harding]

MVL just lost his fourth game in a row, this time to Nakamura.

[MartinCarpenter]

Entirely baffling game from Jobava again Not the normal way to ditch an exchange in a French defense!

[David Robertson]

Entirely baffling game from Jobava again Not the normal way to ditch an exchange in a French defense!

Yep. Completely baffling. And I suspect Karjakin feels the same. It's enough to make me want to quit the game, I understand so little.