Morelia-Linares 2007 - Round 4

Morelia-Linares 2007 February, 17-25 [16:30 EST]   The Morelia - Linares tournament takes place 16th Feb - 11th March 2007. The Morelia half takes place 17th-25th February and Linares 2nd-10th March. The GMs participants are: Topalov, Anand, Leko, Svidler, Aronian, Ivanchuk , Morozevich and Carlsen.

Round-4 by Mig Greengard at Chessninja.com

Two decisive games today, doubling our usual daily ration. There were turnarounds in both cases. Morozevich slowly unwound against Anand's Lopez and was ready to play for a serious advantage but missed his chances and eventually lost all his queenside pawns. It looked like Moro could have busted things open to his advantage with ..f5 at several points, on move 28 or 29. Black could have made his life much easier by hacking a knight with ..Bh6 as well. 37.Nb4! is a star move not at all easy to see. Morozevich is showing his usual supertournament inability to play a strong game from beginning to end. He puts together magnificent sequences only to falter, or gets into trouble and plays brilliantly to save. At the moment he's in the cellar on -2 and Anand is the clear leader on +2.

We remind that the local Morelia paper predicted a win for Vishy. They also got his comments after the game, although they don't get some of the moves right. "I thought I was going to be able to play Nh6 and Ng4 and when that didn't work I really couldn't find anything else. I thought 23.Nd5 Rd8 24.Qg3 was working for me, but when it didn't his bishops started to impose themselves and I think he was better. I don't know if Morozevich missed a chance to win, but he was much better and then made several mistakes. 31..Qh4 when he could have played 31..Bh6."

Ivanchuk was looking good against Carlsen out of a novel opening. You don't often see unique positions by move 7 in super-GM play, although if you do it's probably an Ivanchuk game. After exchanges it looked like White had enough small plusses to at least torture Carlsen for a while, but it turned out quite differently. Carlsen made a series of excellent positional moves to counter actively -- My Chess.FM co-host Larry Christiansen called them Karpovian -- and when Ivanchuk avoided a repetition and then played just a slight inaccuracy he was suddenly in a very difficult endgame. Black won confidently against White's desperate defense. A tremendous achievement from Carlsen to battle back in such fashion against a player of Ivanchuk's caliber. It wasn't clear at the time how uncoordinated White's position was going to be after 34.Ne2?, but in hindsight 34.Ng2 was much better. Then 34..Ne5 can be met by 35.Qf2.

In the miserable R+B vs R+N endgame, it may be possible to dump the d-pawn with 53.Re2!? Rd3 54.Re5 Rd2+ 55.Re2 Rxd4 56.Ke3. If the rooks come off the white a-pawn becomes a danger. It might be wiser for Black to ignore it and just bring up his king. It's also possible for White to play g4 and go after the e-pawn with Re5, again hoping to get the rooks off the board and chase the a-pawn with his king and give up his bishop for the black f-pawn. Regardless, just about anything was better than 53.Rb5. Carlsen's father Henrik is blogging from the event.

Leko was doing well out of the Catalan against Aronian, but the Armenian's remarkable ability to provoke complications again served him well. He could easily be on minus two in Morelia but he might be playing his way back into shape. Here he provoked Leko into a dangerous-looking exchange sac that fizzles out into a superior game for Black. Thanks to the indefatigable John Henderson grabbing him, we spoke on the air with Aronian after the game and he said he simply thought the B vs R endgame was winning for him. Otherwise, he said, he would have hung on to his f-pawn. Leko's knowledge of practical theoretical endgames has few equals in the chess world, it's worth noting. I asked Aronian about his lucky escape against Moro in round three, specifically if he had seen the spectacular mate Morozevich missed. He said "no, of course not, or as a gentleman I would have resigned immediately!" I called him a liar and he cracked up. Nice try, Levon! He's hilarious. He promised to come back on when he wins a game.

Topalov-Svidler was a classic example of the Grunfeld breed. White gets lots of space and Black scrambles with very sharp play to hold the balance all over the board. Then, as if by magic, White's threats evaporate and Black's active pieces give enough, or more than enough, play for a draw. But man these things look horrible for Black for a long time.

Chess.FM coverage
ICC will have daily live commentary of the second major of 2007, hosted by Mig Greengard, who will be joined by former World Chess Champion, GM Susan Polgar, with IM Jennifer Shahade, GM Jon Speelman, GM Larry Christiansen, GM Joel Benjamin, and GM Gregory Kaidanov.

R	Replay (english)	L	Live (english)	L	Live (español)	L	Live (français)

Thur, Feb 22 - R5 LISTEN HOST GUEST L 16:30 EST IM Jennifer Shahade GM Larry Christiansen L 16:30 EST GM Fernando Peralta R 23:00 EST IM Jennifer Shahade GM Larry Christiansen Fri, Feb 23 is FREE DAY Sat, Feb 24 - R6 LISTEN HOST GUEST L 16:30 EST Mig Greengard GM Susan Polgar L 16:30 EST IM Alejo de Dovitiis R 23:00 EST Mig Greengard GM Susan Polgar Sun, Feb 25 - R7 LISTEN HOST GUEST L 16:30 EST Mig Greengard GM Larry Christiansen L 16:30 EST GM Miguel Illescas R 23:00 EST Mig Greengard GM Larry Christiansen On the server: Type "tell webcast english" or type "tell webcast espanol"

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The New in Chess Trivia Contest! Chess.FM [16:30 EST] ICC and New in Chess presents The New in Chess Trivia Contest! Tune-in to Mig on ICC Chess.FM for our round-by-round coverage of Morelia-Linares 2007, and each round you could win a 1-year subscription to the world's best chess magazine. For more information and rules, visit our help page.

Round-1: Milo, Russianbear and then Grotesque was the winners for the month and the NIC subscription.
Round-2: tux68, andre, and LemonExtract was the winners for the month and the NIC subscription.
Round-3: TheMuffin , andnathanschulz was the winners for the month and the NIC subscription.
Round-4: camembert , tux68 was the winners for the month and the ICC t-shirt.