And then there were 2

While Vladimir Kramnik seemed to have a little difficulty in coming to grips with the nuances of the swiss tournament, Anish Giri was more at home in the Qatar Masters, reeling off 6 wins from 6 games. In doing so he has taken a point and a half lead over everyone, with one exception, Vladimir Kramnik. Having drawn his first 2 games, Kramnik has climbed back to the top board after 4 straight wins. This has set up the rather juicy Kramnik v Giri pairing in tonight's round. Kramnik has the white bits for this game, and as I write this they are just getting into a Catalan middle game.
I'm not sure what Kramnik thought of the experience of playing in the middle tables of a tournament, but it seems that he wanted to get out of there pretty quickly. An clear example of this was his 5th round game against Sanan Sjugirov. The game only lasted 25 moves and looked like 'hack v hack'. In the end Sjugirov tries to finish of Kramnik with a piece sac, but it turned out that Kramnik was the one with the mating attack.


Kramnik,Vladimir (2760) - Sjugirov,Sanan (2673) [A05]
Qatar Masters Open Doha (6.2), 01.12.2014

1. Nf3 Nf6 2. g3 d5 3. Bg2 c6 4. d3 Bg4 5. O-O Nbd7 6. Qe1 e5 7. e4 Bd6 8. h3 Bh5 9. Nh4 O-O 10. g4 Bg6 11. g5 Nh5 12. exd5 cxd5 13. Nxg6 hxg6 14. Bxd5 Nf4 15. Bxf4 exf4 16. h4 Qc8 17. Qe4 Qxc2 18. Nc3 Qxb2 19. Qxg6 Bc5 20. Ne4 Qe5 21. Bb3 Bxf2+ 22. Nxf2 f3 23. Ne4 Qd4+ 24. Kh1 Qb2 25. Nf6+ 1-0