Mr. Excitement

Grischuk excitement
Chess Piece
By Bobby Ang

In the Candidates tournament held in Kazan last May Alexander Grischuk was seeded 6th out of eight players but enjoyed quite a good run — he upset the two top seeds (Levon Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik) and faced Boris Gelfand in the finals — whoever wins will be playing Vishy Anand in the 2012 World Chess Championship. After five straight draws Gelfand won the final game to win the match 3.5-2.5.

This was a great performance, but unfortunately Grischuk went under a lot of criticism for his match tactics. He was a great rapid and blitz player, so Grischuk would seek to draw the regular games and try to win in the tie-breaks where the faster time-controls were used. Grischuk-Aronian was a 2-2 tie in the four regular games, with Grischuk winning the rapid playoff 2.5-1.5 to advance to the semifinals.

In the semifinals, his opponent was the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. Grischuk drew early with white and defending vigorously with black and all the regular and rapid games were drawn. Grischuk then won the blitz playoff 1.5-0.5 to advance to the final.

If this tactic had also succeeded against Gelfand then we would have a funny situation where a player who did not win a single game (the rapid and blitz sections were in the nature of tie-breaks and not actual tournament games — they are not even rated) would get into the position of challenger for the world crown.

Anyway, last September the next FIDE World Cup (part of the Candidates’ cycle to choose a challenger to the world champion in 2014) started and of course Grischuk participated. He defeated Vladimir Genba, the nominee of the host country (1.5-0.5), the controversial French GM Sebastian Feller 3-1 (this is the one who is accused of cheating in the recent chess Olympiad), Alexander Morozevich 1.5-0.5, European Champion 2.5-1.5, the CzechChessChampion (try saying that fast) David Navara 2.5-1.5, Vassily Ivanchuk (if you don’t know who this is then I condemn you to go to the national library and look up past “Chess Piece” articles) 3.5-2.5, before falling in the finals to Peter Svidler 1.5-2.5.

Second place in two great tournaments in succession!

If the reader does not mind my saying, he reminds me of the Philippines’ Luis Chiong. A fantastic blitz player. Gets into time trouble in most of his games but when the flags are up, pieces are flying across the board, everything is chaotic, you will detect that he is the only one in the vicinity of the chess game who is completely calm, with tremendous concentration, and inevitably he is the one who wins. There was even a time when Alexander Grischuk shaved off all his hair for a shiny pate, just like Luis!

More here.