Tuesday 31 January 2017

2017 Gibraltar Masters - Day 7

With 3 rounds to play, 4 players now share the lead in the 2017 Gibraltar Masters. Two of yesterdays leaders, Hikaru Nakamura and David Anton Guijarro played a quick draw (by repetition of course) to move to 6/7. On Board 2 Maxime Vachier Lagrave ended Michael Adams unbeaten run to also reach 6. And Yangyi Yu demolished Valentin Dragnev to become the 4th member of the leading group.
However the group on 5.5 still has hopes of winning the event, especially as it includes players like Adams, Short, Gelfand and Topalov. Also in the group is Antoaneta Stefanova, who is currently the leading female player.
IM Bobby Cheng had another tough game today, against World Problem Solving Champion Kacper Piorun. The  opening was slightly bizarre (as explained by Piorun in the commentary room) before the game become highly tactical. Unfortunately for Cheng, the tactics were in Piorun's favour, leaving Cheng on 4/7. However the strength of the event is still working in Cheng's favour as hist TPR is still over 2500, and a good finish may still result in a GM norm. FM Zachary Loh also won today to get back to 50%. He plays GM Mathias Womacka tomorrow, and a win may put him in the frame for an IM norm.


Dragnev,Valentin - Yu,Yangyi [B46]
2017 Gibraltar Masters (7), 30.01.2017


3 comments:

Skulte said...

But more importantly, how did you do?

Shaun Press said...

Me. Poorly. Currently on 2.5/8. My target score at the start was 3/9 (or possibly 3.5/10) and while it is still achievable it's not going to be a 'good' 3.

Mr Tomato said...

Shaun, do you think 18. Bh5+ was a bad move? It isn't very flexible in my view because you should be able to go bh5+ later on whenever you want to and I think the king will want to go to d7 anyway so that the other rook can join in the attack on the queenside and bh5 is just forcing him to do this. What are your thoughts?