Monday 19 January 2009

It looks like a club game

Corus, the first super GM event for the year is underway, and already there have been some exciting games. One game that particularly interested me was Wang Yue v Vassily Ivanchuk in the 2nd round of the top section. It looked like Yue launched an attack out of the opening and went desperately close to winning, just falling short due to Ivanchuk's brilliant defence.
However in looking at it again (and seeing Mikhail Golubev's annotations in ChessToday), it actually looked more like a typical club game. Not in the quality of moves, which were still very good, but in the path that the game took. Basically Ivanchuk played a novelty on move 7, which Yue tried to exploit tactically. Yue then tried an unsound idea which simply lost material. He then threw everything into the attack, and it was Ivanchuk's turn to miss the best moves. However just as he got back into the game Yue played one bad move (20.O-O-O with check!), and got wiped out by Ivanchuk's counter attack.
This kind of game is typical in the club chess I witness, mainly because players are happy to plunge into complications, hoping that the end result will be favourable for them. Normally at the highest level 'hope' is replaced by some sort of certainty (otherwise GM's will normally avoid playing the line), so I'm not sure what either player was thinking in this case.

Wang Yue (2739) - Ivanchuk,V (2779) [D30]
Corus A Wijk aan Zee NED (2), 18.01.2009

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Bg5 dxc4 5.Qa4+ Nbd7 6.Nc3 a6 7.g3 b5 8.Nxb5 Rb8 9.Na7 Rb4 10.Bxf6 gxf6 11.Qa5 Bb7 12.Bh3 Qb8 13.Qh5 Ke7 14.d5 Qxa7 15.dxe6 fxe6(D)
16.Bxe6 Kxe6 17.Qe8+ Be7 18.Qxh8 Nf8 19.Qg8+ Kd7 20.0-0-0+ Ke8 21.Qg4 Qc5 22.a3 Rxb2 23.Kxb2 Qxa3+ 24.Kb1 Qb3+ 25.Ka1 c3 0-1

1 comment:

OzChess.com said...

Unfortunately, given the criticism of some anonymous poster the last time I put a game up (that poster is assumed to be Kevin Bonham by the way), I have declined to put this Ivanchuk game up.

I hope everyone understands that if people are going to be attacked here for doing innocent things like posting games and asking polite questions, well, then maybe people will start to become more circumspect when doing those things in the future.