PoPChess

With a lead of two full points heading into the second half of the Pearl Spring supertournament in Nanjing, China, there didn’t seem much doubt about Magnus Carlsen’s eventual victory. But he was starting the second lap with black against the top two rated players, Leko and Topalov. The Hungarian has an excellent record against Carlsen, despite losing the Miskolc rapid match against him earlier this year. As for Topalov, he’s dangerous enough in general and has legendary comeback qualities. And it would have seemed somehow too easy for Carlsen to have a smooth sail to victory. The leader was tested in both games and came through the fires unscathed.

Leko played the Fianchetto against Carlsen’s Grunfeld, a variation we are all familiar with after seeing it in so many of Karpov’s whites against Kasparov in Valencia just days ago. Leko went with 10.Nbc3, playing his e-knight to f4 and heading for very sharp play. The first new move was Carlsen’s 13..Qa5. Leko got the famous runaway Grunfeld d-pawn even earlier than usual with 17.d6!?, playing to win the exchange. As so often happens in the Grunfeld, Black’s dynamic compensation for the exchange was good enough to force liquidation that didn’t leave White with many winning chances. Even a technical virtuoso like Leko couldn’t create much pressure, though it took some timely action from Black with 54..e4! to force the final liquidation. White surely could have continued to torture Black for a long time otherwise.

Today came Topalov’s turn to try to take down the leader and the world #1 was coming off his first win of the event, though it wasn’t pretty. In round six he played like a wild man with black against Jakovenko and turned a sure loss into a win in the space of a single blunder by the Russian. In some ways it was typical Topalov, risking heavily and outplaying his opponent in complications. But this was more risk and less quality than we’re used to from him, and the win only brought him back to an even score, tied with Wang Yue. We didn’t get to see a second Najdorf from Carlsen today; instead he showed Topalov the Sveshnikov he’s more familiar with. Up to move 21 they followed the line in which Carlsen lost to Shirov in the final round of MTel this year, costing the Norwegian first place. Topalov diverged first with 21.Rc1, leading to a long sequence of razor-sharp tit-for-tat tactics. It quickly boiled down to an extra pawn for Topalov, but it was doubled up and Black’s bishop and rooks were active enough to hold the balance in the endgame.

Two clutch draws from Carlsen to seal the deal. In the final three rounds he has two whites and a two-point lead and even Topalov at his best couldn’t catch that. Round 8: Leko-Topalov, Carlsen-Wang Yue, Jakovenko-Radjabov. FYI there’s another rest day on Wednesday before round nine.