Extra extra!

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Here's the extra edition of The Weekender:

Extra!!! The Chess Plaza Weekender
Monday, 28 January 2008 Quezon Memorial Circle,
Quezon City Weekday Edition

YOUTH TRIUMPHS OVER EXPERIENCE
Aronian, Carlsen win Corus main event

ARMENIAN super hero Levon Aronian and Norwegian wunderkind Magnus Carlsen drew their final games to split the two top prizes in the main event of the Corus Super in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands Sunday (early Monday in Manila).

It is their first major victory in what can be called a key part of the “Grand Slam of Chess.”

With them in Group A are 12 other top-rated players, including world champion Viswanathan Anand of India and former world champions Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria..

Aronian, 25, and Carlsen, 17, are two of the five younger combatants among the world’s 14 toughest fighters, the super grandmasters (having Elo ratings of 2700 and above), in Group A of the Super Corus Tournament.

The three others are Teimour Radjabov, 20, of Azerbaijan, Ukrainian prodigy Pavel Eljanov and two-time world junior champion Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan, who will be 24 and 25 this year, respectively.

Eljanov (2692) is the only one among the 14 megastars who has a rating below 2700.

Aronian heads the Armenian team that captured the gold in the 37th World Olympiad held in Turin, Italy in 2006 while Carlsen is the reigning Norwegian champion who has fired the imagination of his fans with his outstanding performance in almost all major tournaments.

His performance in Wijk aan Zee has been nothing less than phenomenal. He and Aronian dominated the event right from the start, but the teenaged Norwegian suffered his first loss in the ninth round to Peter Leko, 28, of Hungary and again in the 11th round to world champion Viswanathan Anand of India.

Unperturbed by these two losses, Carlsen buckled down to work against past world champion Vladimir Kramnik, beating him in a brilliant display of tactical fireworks in the penultimate 12th.

In the 13th and last round, Carlsen (White) battled Radjabovto a draw in 65 moves of a King’s Indian Defense. Radjabov has been the world’s No.1 junior player until this year because he turns 21 in March.

This enabled the teenager to cling to his premier position along with Aronian, who held Judit Polgar of Hungary with Black in 57 moves of a double-edged Marshall Attack against the Ruy Lopez.

Only Boris Gelfand of Israel and Leko won their final assignments—against Eljanov, in 38 moves of an English Opening, and Mamedyarov, in 27 moves of a Ruy Lopez, Steinitz variation, respectively.

Both winners played White.

Besides Carlsen-Radjabov and Polgar-Aronian, the games drawn in the 13th round were Anand-Kramnik, Ivanchuk-van Wely and Topalov-Adams.

World champion Anand had a slow start, drawing most of his early games after losing to Radjabov in the opener.

Radjabov had a rollercoaster ride midway and up to the end could not seem to find his form.

Polgar, regarded as the strongest female player in the history of the game, had a few fine games but was similarly inconsistent.

The most consistent was Ivanchuk, but he had too many draws as he finished the event undefeated.

The final Group A standings: 1-2. Aronian and Carlsen, 8.0 each; 3-4. Anand and Radjabov, 7.5 each; 5-6. Leko and Ivanchuk, 7.0 each; 7-8. Kramnik and Adams, 6.5 each; 9-11.Topalov, Polgar and Mamedyarov, 6.0 each; 12-14.Eljano, Gelfand and Van Wely, 5.0 each.

In Group B, 29-year-old Sergei Movsesian of Slovakia took the first prize with 9.5 points from 13 games, a full point ahead of runners-up Nigel Short of England and Etienne Bacrot of France.

Movsesian cornered the first prize after drawing with WGM Humpy Koneru, who will be 21 this year, is a former world under-20 women’s champion.

The draw ensured that nobody could catch up with Movsesian, compelling Short and Bacrot to also draw their own final-round games.

The two superstars equally divided the second and third prizes, with Short winning the silver on tiebreak.

WGM Koneru, the lone woman in the group of 14, finished in 11th place.

In Group C, 15-year-old GM Fabiano Caruana of Italy and the United States took the first prize solo with an extraordinary 10 points from 13 games against some of the strongest players in the world.

The Italian-American prodigy finished two points ahead of his closest rivals, Dimitri Reinderman, 35, of The Netherlands and 14-year-old Parimarjan Negi of India.

US women’s champion Irina Krush ended up in fifth place with 7.0 and GM Li Shilong of China in 10th with 6.0.

In the honorary group of four senior players, 76-year-old early tournament leader Viktor Korchnoi of Switzerland suffered a heartbreaking loss to former Dutch champion Jan Timman in the sixth and final round to slide down to a tie for second to third places with his conqueror.

Veteran Serbian GM Ljubomir Ljubojevic, a frequent Manila visitor in the past, took the first prize with an impressive win against 70-year-old Lajos Portisch of Hungary, GM Eugenio Torre’s co-champion in the Toluca (Mexico) Interzonal of 1982 that elevated the Filipino to a world title candidate in 1983.

Ljubojevic had 4.0 points, followed by Timman and Korchnoi with 3.0 apiece. Cellar-dwelling Portisch had 2.0.

So far, the most exciting games played in Group A were Topalov-Kramnik in the ninth round (featured in the regular Sunday edition), Carlsen-Anand and Aronian-van Wely in the 11th round, and Kramnik-Carlsen in the 12th round.

I am reserving these gems for the wrap-up in the regular edition. In the meantime, here is how Leko efficiently disposed of Mamedyarov in the last round.

P. Leko (2753) – S. Mamedyarov (2760)
Rd. 13, Ruy Lopez, Deferred Steinitz (C72)

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 4...Bc5 5.0–0 would have equalized 5.0–0 Bd7 6.d4 exd4 7.Nxd4 b5 7...Nxd4 8.Bxd7+ Qxd7 9.Qxd4! favors White 8.Nxc6± Bxc6 9.Bb3 Nf6 10.c4 Be7 Better than 10...Nxe4 11.Re1 Be7 12.cxb5 axb5 13.Qf3! 11.Nc3 0–0 12.Re1 Re8 13.Bf4 Rb8 14.Qc2 b4 15.Nd5 Nd7 16.Be3 Bf8 17.f3 Ba8 18.Rad1 c6 19.Nf4 Qc7 20.Nd3 a5 21.c5 Bb7
19.Nf4 Qc7 20.Nd3 a5 21.c5 Bb7 22.Bf4 Ba6 Fritz suggests 22...Ne5!? as an interesting option 23.cxd6± Bxd6 24.Bxd6 Qxd6 25.Ne5!

Superb, a discovered attack on the queen and knight to ensure control of the only open file and the seventh rank to boot..

25…Qxe5 Of course not 25...Nxe5 because of 26.Rxd6! 26.Rxd7 Red8 Missing his best shot, 26...Kh8! 27.Red1! Black resigns. If 27…Rxd7 28.Rxd7! and if 27.Bxf7+ Kf8 28.Qxc6! and White wins. 1–0

Meanwhile, past world women’s champion Antoaneta Stefanova led a 42-player field with a perfect score of 4.0 wins from four rounds in the GibTel Open in Gibraltar, the British-controlled island garrison off the Spanish coast guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean.

A mere half point behind her was Chinese superstar Bu Xiangzhi, who once held the record of being the world’s youngest person to win the grandmaster title, the first Asian to do so. He did it in 1999 at the age of 13 years, 10 months and 13 days.