Round Report

Adams - Kasparov: the leaders' game, and again Kasparov came up with the important novelty, although in Closed Sicilian which is not so topical nowadays. Well, I'm not going to tell you that Kasparov won this game as a result of FRITZ work again. No question - it was a strategical masterpiece. But anyway Kasparov's 9…b5! is a strong improvement. It's purely human, by the way, all these silicon monsters are rather weak in this type of positions and simply "don't understand" what's going on.

Position after 9.0-0 (9…b5!)

Some more words about this game. After everything became clear my friend Michael Waitz who is co-director of GM School and co-author of this pages and (it happened) desperate Kasparov's fan called me and asked: "So what will you say now?" Probably he had the same wrong impression as many readers had - that I suppose Kasparov to be a weak player who achieves these magnificent results skillfully using FRITZ+Dokhoian system. Come on, I'm not that paranoid. In my opinion the real problem with Kasparov is just that he is not weak but very strong player. That's the main reason that all these things he does (Polgar "takeback" case, numerous interviews insulting his colleagues, terrible accusations to the organisers and sponsors of the "historical" Deep Blue rematch etc.) do so much harm to the image of chess as a noble game. Imagine if some average GM would start doing all these things. I hope it will not affect chess at all. Probably some eyewitnesses would think: "What a jerk GM … is!". In case of world-best player the conclusion is slightly different: "All chess players must be crazy if the best one is behaving like this. That's a pity.

Anyway after winning this masterpiece Kasparov took the sole lead retaining 100% score with Black pieces in the tournament.

Kramnik - Anand - Vladimir was so inventive that he played a novelty in QGA on move 6.

Position after 5…a6 (6.d5!?)

However, after some next moves (practically forced) the transposed to the ending where Anand had to show some minimal accuracy to hold the balance - draw.

Topalov - Svidler - this game proved once more that if White doesn't want to allow Marshall attack in Ruy Lopez but still wants to play for some advantage he would rather think about Exchange Variation or 6.Qe2 or… I don't know what else. Peter have chosen very logical setup (Qd7, Rae8 and d5) against Veselin's Anti-Marshall and reached completely equal position with ease. Later in the ending both players obviously wanted some action but the position didn't afford it already - draw.

And finally last place play-off which finished exactly so strangely as Ivanchuk - Adams yesterday.

I'd better quit with commenting this case. I know well that any irony in the situation like this can be really painful for the loser. I hope that Vassily will finally show his real chess potential in this tournament.

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