Paris 09: Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Sixth FIDE Grand Prix - Paris 2013

The sixth and final Grand Prix of the system is taking place at the Chapelle de la Villedieu, founded in 1180 by soldier-monks of the Order of the Temple. The playing site is considerably west of Paris. The tournament will determine the last qualifiers for the Candidates tournament for the next World Chess Championship cycle. This leg of the series is being played under classical time controls: Time control: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and then each player gets 15 minutes and an increment of 30 seconds per move after the second time control). No draws offers: Sofia rules!

City of Versailles

The Press Officer for the event, Alina l'Ami, brings us some beautiful pictures of the city of Versailles, which is much closer than Paris is for the players. The city holds a little under 90,000 inhabitants, and it was once the capital of the kingdom of France. Nowadays it is a suburb of Paris and it has a service based economy revolving around its famous Chateau.

Autumn starts to change the leaf coloring in Europe, a sight that many people take for granted but is completely impacting to those that are not used to having four seasons

L’hôtel de ville de Versailles, not an hotel - the city hall

The French motto: Liberté, égalité, fraternité

As many buildings in France, this one is even more spectacular at night

Art can be seen everywhere in France. Felice Varini is a Swiss artist who was nominated for the 200/2001 Marcel Duchamp Prize, and is known for his geometric perspective-localized paintings in rooms and other spaces using projector-stencil techniques. According to mathematics professor and art critic Joel Koskas, "A work of Varini is an anti-Mona Lisa".

Felice paints on architectural and urban spaces, such as buildings walls and streets. The paintings are characterized by one vantage point from which the viewer can see the complete painting (usually a simple geometric shape such as a circle, square or line) while from other view points the viewer will see 'broken' fragmented shapes. The random red lines seen above look like this from the correct vantage point:

An "anti-Mona Lisa"

Round 9

Guests to the tournament: on the left, IM and associate professor on Computer Science and Engineering of Buffalo University, Kenneth W. Regan, on the right is Yuri Garrett - member of the anti-cheating comittee.

Nakamura didn't have any real winning chances today

Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ Ponomariov, Ruslan
The players followed a long theoretical variation in the Nimzo-Indian. Nakamura played the new moves 16.Nd2 but it is unclear exactly how good this move is. On move 17 Black had the choice of playing as he did in the game or immediately pinning the knight on c4 with 17...Rac8, definitely the most logical way of continuing and maybe White would have had to solve a few issues. The continuation in the game gave Ponomariov enough compensation for the pawn and allowed him to simplify into an easily drawn rook endgame.

Ponomariov played logical chess and got a comfortable draw

Gelfand, Boris ½-½ Ivanchuk, Vassily
The Chebanenko or ...a6 Slav continues to be very solid; Ivanchuk obtained a good position from the opening although it would be hard for either side to make progress because of the locked situation in the center. Ivanchuk's 14...Ke7!? was bizarre but by no means a bad move as it highlighted that the game was indeed not going to be opened up any time soon. Actually, the game never opened up, and the players agreed to a draw in a position where all the pawns had survived but none of the minor pieces remained on the board.

Today's position in Gelfand-Ivanchuk was simply too locked up for either side to do anything

Dominguez Perez, Leinier ½-½ Fressinet, Laurent
The Frenchman chose the ultra-solid Berlin defense. Dominguez tried the most typical approach: go for the endgame and try to outplay Black in that position. His only chance to obtain something in the position was to take on c7 on move 23, but even then it seems that Black's position was solid enough and it would have been hard to break through. Instead of that the inaccurate 23.Ng5 basically forced a draw as Black had no choice but to push e5 and then was forced to defend it, creating a repetition.

The Berlin will always make appearance at the top level of chess, it seems as if White is still unable to crack the ensuing endgame

Bacrot, Etienne ½-½ Wang Hao
The players kept trying in an equal position that resulted from a Bogo-Indian. Bacrot had a minimal edge in space because of his more advanced queenside pawns but by no means did this grant him anything tangible. After trying to outplay Wang Hao somehow the players agreed to a draw in move 40 after basically exhausting their resources.

You can't blame the players for not trying, but today neither side was going to give the other a single opportunity to gain an advantage

Tomashevsky played one of the more interesting games of the day, but he managed his nineth draw of the tournament anyways

Tomashevsky, Evgeny ½-½ Grischuk, Alexander
A very interesting game. Grischuk sacrifiiced a pawn early in the game for initiative, but Tomashevsky was not about to play his game and decided to focus in development rather than material gains. Grischuk aggressively expanded and won the pair of bishops but Tomashevsky struck back by getting in the e5 break and strongly placing his knights, matching the power of his opponent's bishops. The duel came to whether the passed pawn on d6 was weak or strong; if it was captured quickly Black would have an overwhelming advantage, but if not maybe Tomashevsky could use it to pin Grischuk to his back ranks. Unfortunately the d-pawn disappeared very soon, as Tomashevsky found himself forced to sacrifice it for activity by his rooks and to eliminate the light squared bishop. Grischuk countered by sacrificing his own pawn to activate his dark-squared bishop, and soon afterwards the game ended in a draw in an interesting rook endgame.

Giri, Anish ½-½ Caruana, Fabiano
Despite using a rather strange opening Caruana had nothing to complain about after ten moves of chess. Giri's set-up was solid but not too ambitious asnd Black had an acceptable Benoni despite putting his bishop on e7. The game went back and forth until Black was allowed to play the move 25...c4! and it was clear that Caruana held an edge. An important inaccuracy on move 31 allowed White to retain a strong knight on e4, which should have been kicked out immediately and maybe Black could have had some winning chances. In the game Caruana sacrificed an exchange for a pawn and counter-chances against White's exposed king. Giri misplayed the position by allowing Black to consolidate his king, he should have struck back with 47.h4! but even without this his position was strong enough to hold to a draw.

Giri held on to dear life but he is still trailing behind Fressinet, Grischuk and Wang Hao by 1.5 points

Tiviakov with Yuri Garrett and Konstantin Landa discussing anti-cheating measures

FIDE Press Officer for the tournament Alin L'Ami in action. Photo courtesy of Eric Cheymol.

Standings

Replay round nine games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Schedule

The games start at 15:00h European time, 17:00h Moscow, 9 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.