[chessmind] Dennis Monokroussos: Daily Update: Sarajevo - Morozevich again!, Leko-Carlsen, and the Tournament of Draws heats up

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Posted by Dennis Monokroussos:
Daily Update: Sarajevo - Morozevich again!, Leko-Carlsen, and the Tournament of Draws heats up
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1212083944.shtml


   In [1]Sarajevo, it looks like the rest day had no effect on the
   leader. Alexander Morozevich built on the 2916 TPR of the first cycle
   with a crushing win over Ivan Sokolov. (His TPR is now 2953!) In the
   other games, Predojevic - Dominguez was an uninspiring 15-move draw,
   but Movsesian - Timofeev was much more interesting, and instructive
   too. Movsesian sacrificed a pawn to reach an opposite-colored bishop
   middlegame where his activity and attacking prospects offered full
   compensation. That's one useful thing to know about opposite-colored
   bishops; they favor the attacker. However, there's also the other,
   better-known aspect of that imbalance: endings with opposite-colored
   bishops can be drawish, and Timofeev used that to his advantage. He
   went from a pawn up to two pawns down, but reached a safe ending where
   an airtight blockade assured him of half a point.
   On to the day two of the [2]Leko-Carlsen rapid match. In game 3, Leko
   pressed and pressed and finally achieved a winning position.
   Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out how to win it. Still more
   unfortunately, he thought he figured out how to win it, but his idea
   involved a one-move blunder, and Carlsen held. This probably took a
   lot out of Leko emotionally, but whatever the case, Carlsen won the
   next game convincingly. The youngster played the fairly harmless 4.Nf3
   + 5.Ne5 version of the Exchange Variation against the Caro-Kann, but
   while he didn't achieve anything out of the opening, he thoroughly
   outplayed Leko in the middlegame, seizing the lead in the match
   (2.5-1.5). Today's games, with my brief comments, can be replayed
   [3]here.
   Finally, the Tournament of Draws (the [4]King's Tournament) finally
   saw all the players engaged in real chess. There were only two
   decisive games* of five (though that's as many as there have been in
   any round of this event), but the shortest game was 37 moves. Let's
   hope this round is the start of a trend; if so, I'll happily stop
   using the tournament alias.
   * Yes, I know that there's a respectable sense in which any result is
   a decisive result. Lacking an elegant alternative ("non-draws"? "won
   games"? The problem with the latter is its ambiguity - someone can
   have a "won game" he doesn't win) way of expressing the same point,
   however, I'll stick to this usage, despite its drawbacks.

References

   1. http://www.skbosna.ba/?jezik=bos
   2. http://www.lekocarlsen.hu/eng/
   3. http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/files/leko_carlsen_08_day2.htm
   4. http://www.clubulregilor.ro/