Former World champion Ruslan Ponomariov settled for an exciting draw as White against former World Junior champion Levon Aronian of Armenia in the first game of the finals of World Chess Cup now drawing to a close in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia.
The first draw in the two games mini-match means that Aronian will have the upper hand in the return game to be played on Saturday, as he will have the advantage of playing White. In case of a draw, the players will have to fight it out in the tie-break games of shorter duration.
Out of the 8-games of the final round that is played to establish the top 16 of the World Cup, 4 ended in quick draws while the remaining four produced decisive results.
Once again it was the energy level of the 15-year-old Magnus Carlsen that caught the attention of all, as the child prodigy cruised to a fantastic victory over Russian turned American Gata Kamsky, a child prodigy himself in the 80s.
Carlsen fighting for the 9-10 place here went for the blood in this near one-sided contest and sacrificed as many as two minor pieces before recovering a rook in the tactically inclined middle game.
Kamsky on his part fought hard for a long time but as the first time control approached, missed the thread of the position, lost one minor piece, and never recovered. The game lasted 48 moves.
Irrespective of the result here, being in the top ten, both Carlsen and Kamsky have qualified to the candidates stage of the next world championship match tournament tentatively scheduled in 2007.
While Carlsen invoked much interest in his match that is purely of academic interest, Ponomariov did his bit by going for a victory, albeit without success. Playing the Anti-Marshall Ponomariov ensured all sorts of tactical complications in the middle game but Aronian was simply alert to match his opponent move for move. The draw was agreed to in 31 moves.
In the fight for 3-4 places, Russian Alexander Grischuk was pleasantly surprised by a rather meek approach of Etienne Bacrot of France who took a draw in just 14 moves as White. Grischuk after a short while, agreed to the proposal, banking on his White pieces in the return game.
For the 5th spot, Israeli Boris Gelfand almost took a cue from Bacrot in his 16-moves duel with Evgeny Bareev of Russia. Also settling down with a draw was Konstantin Sakaev who is fighting for 15th place against another Frenchman Joel Lautier.
Ending on the winning side was Sergei Rublevsky of Russia who is fighting here for the 7th spot. On the receiving end here was Mikhail Gurevich of Belgium who was beaten in just 23 moves of a French defense game.
Loek Van Wely of the Netherlands and Vladimir Malakhov of Russia were the other victors of the day accounting for Alexey Dreev of Russia and Francisco Vallejo Pons of Spain respectively.
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