Medias Kings Rd9: Karjakin catches Carlsen – again

ROMGAZ and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade” of Bucharest are staging a double round robin tournament with six top GMs: the world's second highest ranked player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway; Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk, currently the world's number five; Sergey Karjakin, former child prodigy and youngest GM of all time; top US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, clear winner of this year's Wijk aan Zee tournament; Teimour Radjabov, one of Azerbaijan's top GMs, and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, the best Romanian player. The competition is taking place from June 11th to 22nd 2011 in Medias, Romania.

GM Dorian Rogozenco comments on round nine

Advice and encouragement before the game by Elisabeta the Wise...

... who then ceremonially executes the first move of the game

Ivanchuk’s quick loss against Karjakin was the biggest surprise of the ninth round. After just 15 moves Black’s position looked terrible, allowing Karjakin nicely to finish the game with a direct attack against the opponent’s king. Ivanchuk resigned at move 22 after spending just about 15 minutes of his time for the entire game.

Nisipeanu-Carlsen was an interesting strategic battle in the Breyer Variation of the Ruy Lopez. On move 16 the Norwegian chose a rare subvariation, forcing his opponent to think for about 20 moves. The result of this lengthy thinking was an interesting novelty from the Romanian GM, which looked promising for White indeed. However, Carlsen quickly started activity in the center and after a Nisipeanu’s positional exchange sacrifice it became clear that the chances for both sides are equal. Draw agreed on move 32.

Always in a cheerful mood, even when facing the Mag: Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu

Radjabov met Nakamura’s 1.e4 with the so-called Kalashnikov Variation of the Sicilian Defense. The game confirmed Radjabov’s words from the beginning of the tournament: “The opening doesn’t matter, everything should be a draw”. In spite of Nakamura’s extra pawn, the better control of the dark squares secured Radjabov the draw in the bishops endgame.

All photos by Ionut Anisca

Standings after nine rounds

Thus before the last round Carlsen and Karjakin are leading the field with 6 points out of 9. They will meet tomorrow (Carlsen with the white pieces) to determine the victor of the 5th edition of the Kings’ Tournament. Notice that the last round games will start two hours earlier, at 13:30 local time.

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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