Monday 30 January 2017

2017 Gibraltar Masters - Day 6

The 6th round of the 2017 Gibraltar Masters was particularly blood thirsty, with the majority of top board games ending in victory or heartbreak. Probably the highlight of the round was Nigel Short's win over Fabiano Caruana in a Caro-Kan Two Knights. Short won a pawn in the middle game, then won the exchange to head to a winning ending, but even then Caruana made him fight all the way.
IM Valentin Dragnev (AUT) also scored a momentous win, beating  Vassily Ivanchuk, and is now on 5/6 with a 2700+ PR.
Michael Adams continued his good run, beating Wenjun Ju to score 5.5/6. Hikaru Nakamura is also on the score, as is another tournament surprise packet, David Anton Guijarro. Guijarro is up against Nakamura in round 7, while Adams has to contend with Vachier-Lagrave.
IM Bobby Cheng had a good win against GM SS Ganguly. At one point Ganguly could have accepted a repetition offer from Cheng, but in refusing to do so, just left himself with a worse position. FM Zachary Loh drew with Kim Yew Chan (MAS), looking slightly worse when I had a quick look at the game. I got lucky in my game against Alistair Compton (NZL), when I grabbed a 'free' pawn, only to miss the refutation. However we both then missed a stronger version of the tactic, and as a result I ended up with 3 pawns for a piece (rather than 2), and I was able to set up a position where a draw was the logical result.

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