Corus 03: Leko, Ponomariov, Grischuk win

Corus Chess Tournament Wijk aan Zee 14 – 30 January 2005 Official web site – Live coverage – All ChessBase reports

Round three

Peter Leko (picture right) appears to be on the rampage. After beating top seed Vishy Anand with the black pieces in round two, the classical chess world championship challenger took on Peter Svidler with a novelty on move 17 (Rg4) in their round three Najdorf game. On move 21 he lodged a knight on c6, and Svidler had to sacrifice an exchange to get rid of this thorn in the black position. The St Petersburg GM never recovered from this and although he fought back valliantly he had to resign on move 57. Peter Leko is slowing groing into the favourite in this Wijk aan Zee tournament.
Ruslan Ponomariov (above), former FIDE world champion from Ukraine, faced a novelty by Ivan Sokolov on move 13, but calmly refute the idea of his Dutch opponent, who quickly found himself a pawn down and sliding towards disaster. Sokolov fought on for 61 moves, but in the end he was forced to capitulate in the endgame rook vs two minor pieces.
In the Alex vs Alex game – Sasha vs Sasha in Russian – Alexander Morozevich (right) played a rare move in the Sicilian Morra, 5.c3, and had his opponent thinking. In fact Alexander Grischuk spent such a lot of time on his opening plans that people on the Playchess.com server decided there was a transmission problem in Wijk. But the younger Alex was working out a winning strategy and left the out-of-form Morozevich without a chance. The win was never really in doubt and came after 42 moves.
Nigel Short (above) faced a determined Vishy Anand's Caro Kann Advanced Variation, which got the world's number two a slightly passive position, but never allowed any real danger to develop. The game was drawn in 23 moves.

The encounter between top Cuban GM Lazaro Bruzon and Britain's Michael Adams (above left and right) was a highly dramatic affair in a closed Ruy Lopez, with moves like exf8=Q+ keeping the public on their toes. But it ended peacefully after 30 moves.

Another drawn game was Judit Polgar against Vladimir Kramnik (above), which started off with 21 moves of theory and a novelty by the Hungarian player (22.Nxe7). Judit had an optically active position, but Garry Kasparov, watching the game on Playchess.com, told the audience that Black was better, predicting most of the moves that then appeared on the board.

Kramnik took the initiative and, possibly remembering his first world championship game against Peter Leko in Brissago, traded down to an ending of two rooks and a pawn vs queen and pawn for the opponent. After that he spent 23 moves trying to win, but the Brissago outcome did not materialise against the resiliant Judit Polgar. On move 59 Judit sacrificed her last pawn for a perpetual (replay game below).

Standings

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Groups B and C

Women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova defeated Sipke Ernst with a cross-fire of tactics.
	Ernst,S (2509) - Stefanova,A (2491) [D15] 25...g5 26.Bf5 d4+ 27.Ke2 Re7 28.Qc4 Rxf5 29.Qxd4+ Qb6 30.Kf1 Bc5 31.Qe4 Qb5+ 32.Kg1 Rexe5 33.fxe5 Rxf2 0-1

Magnus Carlsen (above) the 14-year-old GM from Norway, faced his sometimes trainer Peter Heine Nielsen, 32 years old, 2648 Elo strong and physically maybe three time Magnus' size. And Magnus had the black pieces. The two got into a very exciting tactical battle, with Black two pawns up, but after 30 moves the game ended in a draw by repetition.

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  Group A – Group B – Group C

  Pictures by Pufichek at Kosteniuk.com (with ©) and Olena Boytsun

All results and schedule

Groups B + C