If the opening rounds of the 2015 Qatar Masters Open resembled cat-and-mouse with lower-rated opposition, so too did the beginning of World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen’s fifth-round game. He waited and waited for ...Be6, then pounced with Nf4 and went full-on tiger against Black’s king.
Playing GM Li Chao in the fifth round, the Norwegian knew he would face a Grunfeld but didn’t know the game would explode like it did. Both sides threatened various mates on opposite rook files, with Carlsen offering a pawn to expedite his attack, while Chao offered his whole queen!
Carlsen had it mostly worked out, even avoiding an aesthetic but faulty pitfall — a mouthwatering underpromotion that actually would have mated himself! Instead he went for a more practical win, and with it he earned sole possession of first place as the tournament took its rest day yesterday.
“Today I felt like playing a sharp game,” Carlsen said when he saw the “red flags” in Chao’s position. “Once in a while I feel up to the challenge. It was a very strange struggle at first. We were both making waiting moves. When I had the chance I just went for it. I don’t know if it was correct by any means.”
Did he agree with GM Vladimir Kramnik’s statement that it’s easier to play against 2700s since their style is more expected?
“Maybe, but also playing through Li Chao’s games before the round today, I realized that I don’t understand the way that he plays at all.”
Carlsen alluded to the game’s pace several times. It began methodically, then exploded. As poker players often say, this game had “long periods of boredom followed by moments of sheer terror.”
“The nature of the opening,” he began, “there’s going to be a large fight...It’s fun to play some enterprising chess.” (See below to see just how right he was about this variation!)
Carlsen said his king’s pusillanimous run to a1 reminded him of another game he had played. At Wijk aan Zee 2011 he also moved his king from c1-b1-a1 and then blistered GM Hikaru Nakamura on the kingside. Carlsen recalled that GM Alexander Grischuk was impressed that he “wasted two moves and I still killed the guy.”
The only other players that could have caught Carlsen (on the chess board!) failed to do so. GMs Anish Giri and Wesley So played a game so balanced on board two that neither pushed the computer evaluation above +/-0.2. GM Maxim Matlakov lost to GM Vladimir Kramnik on board three, but Kramnik began the day a half-point off the pace, where he remains.
“I was under slight pressure,” So said. “I had a feeling I was not worse.” In fact, he played one of the most equal games of the year according to computer evaluations.
After losing his first three decisive games to Giri in his career, So notched his first win against him at this year’s Gashimov Memorial, then beat the Dutchman in a tiebreak to win the Bilbao Masters last month.
“That win in Gashimov Memorial was a big thing,” So said. “I think playing against the top 10 players has helped me improve.”
So has won the largest purse in an open of any player in the field ($100,000 at the 2014 Millionaire Chess Open). He’s also played in many more opens recently than other world top 10 players present. He thought that gives only a very slight edge on the field, but didn’t want to overstate its importance.
(qatarmastersopen.com)