The second round of the FIDE Grand Prix tournament in Thessaloniki produced more decisive results and now we have as many as five players sharing the lead with 1,5 points each.Alexander Morozevich, Fabiano Caruana and Alexander Grischuk ...
The second round of the FIDE Grand Prix tournament in Thessaloniki produced more decisive results and now we have as many as five players sharing the lead with 1,5 points each.Alexander Morozevich, Fabiano Caruana and Alexander Grischuk took advantage of the white pieces and signed important victories. The other three games were drawn.Hikaru Nakamura, arriving directly from Norway Chess tournament, has a difficult start with two losses in two consecutive games with black pieces.Results, pairings, standings and photo gallery are updated.The Grand Prix tournament is attracting huge attention in Thessaloniki, the chess capitol of Greece. Even on the working days, around 100 people join the commentator GM Ioannis Papaioannou in the Salonika bar of Makedonia Palace.In addition, GM Stelios Halkias and FM Sotiris Logothetis are providing live English commentary for the official website. Guests are commonly joining in to share their thoughts on the games. Today we had an honour to welcome the reigning Greek champion Antonios Pavlidis in the commentary room.Nelly Serefidou, reigning Greek U18 Girls champion, and Elisavet Papathanasiou, two-times Greek U18 Girls champion, also analysed with the commentators.Leinier Dominguez - Ruslan Ponomariov 1/2-1/2Ponomariov aimed to play the popular Marshall Attack in the Ruy Lopez, but Dominguez deviated with the quiet 8.h3 and 9.d3.Black prepared the d5-push and comfortably equalised. White released the tension on the a-file and exchanged a couple of pieces. Immediately after that the players silently agreed to a draw with the three-fold repetition.Dominguez said that he was surprised by the black's opening choice and decided to play solid. Ponomariov based his preparation on the game that Leinier played with white against Kasimdzhanov in Tashkent. He also analysed some games from the recent European Championship in Poland.Etienne Bacrot - Rustam Kasimdzhanov 1/2-1/2Bacrot revived the old main line against the Gruenfeld Indian defence that is occasionally springing into popularity thanks to the efforts of Gelfand and Kramnik. He however played the direct 13.Rxb7 instead of the more popular Bg5 or Be3.This system allowed black to take down the central d4-pawn, which is often white's main trump in the resulting endgames. Here white relied on the Rook on the 7th rank and pressure against the f7-pawn.Black was on time to activate his pieces and contest the 7th rank. After the massive exchanges of heavy pieces, draw was singed on move 35.Alexander Morozevich - Peter Svidler 1-0The match started as a Four Knights Game and Svidler opted for the active Rubinstein variation. Black sacrifices a pawn but gets good compensation as white pieces are a little bit clumsy.Black challenged white's foremost pawn on e5, but Morozevich didn't want to dig in with 13.Bc2 and 14.f4, but instead went for the inspiring b4-b5 advance.Later we learned from Morozevich that this was his attempt to activate the pieces on the queenside. He was aware that black might have obtained a strong attack on the white King, but he decided to take the risk.White pressed the opponent's c6 and d5-pawns, when black erred with the unfortunate e5-e4 push. This move was a logical attempt to grab the space and liberate e5-square for the pieces, but unfortunately for Svidler it had a tactical flow.The point is that after 17...bxc6 18. Bxc6 Rxc6 black expected only 19. Nxf5 and then 20. Nxd5, but he missed that the immediate 19. Nbxd5 is coming in with crushing effect.Svidler tried to cause some trouble on the kingside, but this was too slow as white simply captured everything on his way and promoted a new Queen on a8.Morozevich said in the press conference that his computer broke down last night and he couldn't access his database. The only files that were available were on the Four Knights Game, so he was forced to go with this opening.Veselin Topalov - Gata Kamsky 1/2-1/2This was another Gruenfeld Indian defence, but here Topalov employed Kram
