John Saunders reports: Round two meant a return to the tried and trusted (if not universally popular) method of making the pairings. Let’s park the whole pairings business for now, and for once I’ll try to stick to the point, which is to tell you what happened in round two. I can’t guarantee my good intentions will last or I won’t go off on one of my Grandpa Simpson-style rambles down memory lane at some point. But, as his grandson famously said, “I can’t promise to try but I’ll try to try.”
Magnus Carlsen opts for the Modern defence against Eugene Perelshteyn
After his trouble-free first round Magnus Carlsen found himself facing a sterner test with the black pieces. Eugene Perelshteyn, originally from Ukraine, is a 37-year-old US GM, and has a highly respectable rating of 2527. Magnus played the so-called Modern Defence, so named in the early 1970s… Grandpa Simpson alert… OK, I’ll keep that anecdote for another day. The Modern is usually a long way down the list of super-GM choices against 1.e4 because it is a bit dubious, so that was a surprising thing in itself.
Let’s have a look at the game…
Nikolas Lubbe did well to hold Fabiano Caruana
Fabiano Caruana, after his stellar victory over Kramnik in the first round, now faced similar calibre opposition to Magnus in the second. Nikolas Lubbe is a German IM with a GM-level rating of 2515. Fabiano couldn’t do better than draw this game. More or less the same could be said for Vishy Anand, playing Jonas Lampert, another German IM with a 2500-ish rating.
Jonas Lampert made it a German 1-2 – or at least half-half – by drawing with Vishy Anand
The super-GMs on the next couple of boards are more attuned to the hurly-burly of open competition than the players immediately above them in rating. As Sollozzo said in Godfather One, “it’s just business.” In the early stages of such tournaments Hikaru Nakamura and Mickey Adams clock in after lunch, sit down to their office job for a few hours, and then knock off around five or six o’clock, pausing only to chat with their opponents and hand their scoresheet to the arbiter claiming the usual full point.
Just another day in the office for Mickey Adams. But Indian prodigy Pragganandhaa’s day will surely come
The two of them have quite different characters but their modus operandi on a normal working day is pretty similar. And also very cool. Their opponents of the second round, Helgi Olafsson and the Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa (that’s the first time I’ve written his name without using cut and paste, so the spelling is probably wrong) respectively both played pretty well and had initiatives or advantages in the middleplay. Until they didn’t. And then it was all over.
Hou Yifan just about to complete a fine win against Elisabeth Paehtz
Hou Yifan was paired with her second female opponent in a row, causing much amusement to the spectators and the people of Twitter, remembering the enormous hoohah – or do I mean houhah? Or brouhaha? – OK, I’ll settle for the non-punning synonym “fuss” – she stirred up at the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters earlier in the year because she was unhappy at being paired with seven women in the space of ten rounds. She was given a tough game by Elisabeth Paehtz but ran out the winner in a queen and pawns ending to put her on 1½/2. Her reward? A pairing with a third female opponent, Nino Batsiashvili, in round three. Too funny for words, but I’d better not say any more as I promised not to witter on about pairings for now.
Red-headed arbiter Anna Srbrnic checks red-headed Yuliya Shvayger for any electronic devices. (She didn’t have any.) The day before she had chosen red-headed Jovi Houska for the electronic check. Is there a red-headed conspiracy going on here? I think we should be told. Brunette photographer Maria Emelianova may feel left out.
Top banana Vlad Kramnik was slumming it on board 52 against Vilmos Balint of Hungary but, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’ll be back.
EDIT: Or maybe not – not long after I filed this report, former world champion Vladimir Kramnik lost to 65-year-old US GM James Tarjan of the USA.
Anna Rudolf had a very long game but it was worth it – she won.
The last game to finish, around 8pm, was Salomon-Almasi. The young Norwegian went astray right at the end.
