EVENTFUL DRAWS IN TAL MEMORIAL

Having just posted an entry about Mikhail Tal, it seems appropriate to mention the current Tal Memorial, being played in Moscow. The field includes 10 of the very best players in the world, and the lowest rated is Magnus Carlsen of Norway, at 2698! The field is extremely strong, but also there is no clear favorite—any number of players could win this event.

After three decisive results in five games in Round 1, all five games in Round 2 were drawn, but there was much excitement nevertheless! The game between Peter Leko (he tied a World Championship match with Vladimir Kramnik 7-7 in 2004) and young star Alexander Grischuk was a fascinating battle that saw Grischuk turn down an interesting piece sacrifice in the late middlegame to get real winning chances.

In the game between the ever-popular Alexander Morozevich and the "wunderking" Magnus Carlsen, Carlsen claimed a draw because he intended to play a move which would create the same position on the board for the third time. The chief arbiter of the event, Geurt Gijssen, who many would argue is the best Internatinal Arbiter in the world right now, actually made a mistake in going over the game and agreeing that the claim was correct: the same physical position did appear on the board three times, but in one of those cases the player on move was different! By definition, in a repeated position, ALL elements of the position must be the same as on other occasions, including castling or en passant (if these apply), and the player to move. The result stood as a draw.

Boris Gelfand, Ruslan Ponomariov, and Levon Aronian lead the tournament with 1.5 out of 2 so far in this Round Robin (10 players, 9 rounds).

To see ChessBase.com's report on this event, click here.