Hooray for the underdog

From the final round of the World Teams Championship comes the following game. On paper Vladimir Kramnik should have had no trouble beating Egyptian IM Mohamed Ezat, but as the game was not played on paper, it turned out quite different. Ezat, who is well known to Canberra players after playing in the 2000 Australian Open, even tried a speculative queen sacrifice out of the opening. It was a sacrifice in the true sense of the word, as he never recovered the queen, although he eventually ended up with enough material to more than make up for it. After a very long battle the game ended in a draw, which turned out to be significant for tournament standings, as it gave Russia the half point needed to secure outright first place (they beat Egypt 2.5-1.5).
Russia finished with 15 match points, one ahead of China, with Ukraine in third place.


Kramnik,Vladimir (2793) - Ezat,Mohamed (2454) [A14]
World Teams Antalya TUR (9.1), 05.12.2013