Avoiding a last place finish

CHENNAI: Magnus Carlsen of Norway won the Bilbao Grand Slam chess tournament with a last-round draw against Hikaru Nakamura of US on Tuesday.

Carlsen’s closest rival for title, Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, also drew his game against Levon Aronian of Armenia leading to a tie for first place with 15 points each in the Bilbao (football scoring) system but both the tiebreaks (SB and traditional scoring) favoured the Norwegian.

If Carlsen and Ivanchuk fought for the first place, on the adjacent table, world champion Viswanathan Anand was engaged in a do-or-die battle for avoiding the last place with Vallejo Pons of Spain. It was interesting to watch Anand try everything in his bag to outplay Vallejo, who started the round with a one-point advantage over the Indian.

Anand looked set for another draw, which would have given him the last place. But the queens gambit declined came alive around move 24, when Anand won a pawn and lined up his rooks targeting Vallejo’s king.

The Spaniard had his own threats against Anand but the world champion showed some fighting spirit in this last game and sealed a win after exchanging the knight and creating a passed pawn by move 39. With this, Anand reached 12 points and tied for the 3-5 places with Levon Aronian and Nakamura.

Ivanchuk and Carlsen battled in the Berlin defence which looked a draw right from the beginning. However, on move 10, Ivanchuk tried a new move that would give the Ukrainian a small plus and no risks whatever.

Nakamura and Carlsen drew in 43 moves of queens gambit declined in a rook and pawn ending. After the queens got exchanged on move 26, the game had no life.

Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar