An outrageous bluff

After the disappointment of yesterdays game, I decided to cheer myself up with a little site seeing around Khanty, before heading back to the venue to watch the playoff games. As much I don't like matches being decided by faster and faster games, I do admit they are exciting to watch.
I suspect one of the reasons is that there are more inaccuracies, which makes the games more accessible to average players. Even more entertaining is when everyone except the two players can see what is going on, as happened in at least one game I saw.
Sam Shankland needed to beat Eltaj Safarli to stay in the tournament, having lost the previous 10m+10s game. This was looking very unlikely at move 27, as Shankland blundered with 27.a4?? But Safarli began to think, and it became clear to the commentators, that Safarli was only looking at 27...Ra6, instead of 27...Rxd6, which wins a piece. After a couple of minutes thinking, Safarli played 27...Ra6, letting Shankland of the hook, for one move at least. However Shankland still had a problem, in that moving the rook from a1 dropped the a pawn. So based on the fact that Safarli had already missed Rxd6, he made the incredibly practical decision to play 28.a5. This paid off in the short term when Safarli missed the tactic a second time, playing 28...Rc6.
However the story did not have a happy ending as Shankland wasn't able to turn the resulting position into a win, and went out 3.5-2.5 in the tiebreaks.


Shankland, Sam - Safarli, Eltaj [D94]
FIDE World Cup 2019, 2019.09.12