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The fourth leg of the FIDE Grand Prix Series at the Notre Dame Center Jerusalem saw all eight games finishing in draws.
The top two leaders in the series, that was earlier conducted in Moscow, Riga and Hamburg will qualify for the Candidates Tournament 2020 against Magnus Carlsen.
The Ian Nepomniachtchi – Boris Gelfand match-up and Pentala Harikrishna – Sergey Karjakin finished after less than one hour of play.
Nepomniachtchi went for a well-known theoretical line in Sicilian Anti-Sveshnikov but according to Gelfand, his opponent quite misplayed it, so the final position was very dry and none of the sides had real chances to play for something.
“First of all, I’m happy to play in Jerusalem Grand Prix tournament as Grand Prix events are one of my favorite tournaments. I had so many memorable games. It’s also nice to play especially in Jerusalem in front of the local public”, said Boris Gelfand after the game.
Pentala decided to play a solid Ruy Lopez Berlin against Karjakin, and after Grandmasters traded most of the pieces, the draw was agreed on move 21.
Veselin Topalov chose to play 1.c4 against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, since he has unsuccessfully tried 1.e4 and 1.d4 in the previous mini-matches against the same opponent. “It was a good choice, as at least I manage not to lose the game. It’s a good start, compared to my usual first matches”, said Veselin at the postgame interview.
A symmetrical English was played and, in fact, the former world champion got an advantage right after the opening. He put a lot of pressure on his opponent today and the French Grandmaster, who came directly from the Grand Chess Tour finals in London, had to defend “a very suspicious position”. Veselin Topalov missed his opponent’s counterplay with a piece sacrifice, which turned to be good enough to keep the balance in the game.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov recalled his memories from the last stage of Grand Prix in 2017, when he was watching from his house the last game between Jakovenko and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. In case of victory, MVL would qualify for the Candidates 2018 instead of Shakhryar. Jakovenko won that game and helped Shakhriyar to proceed to the Candidates 2018.
Ironically, Shakhriyar was paired against Dmitry Jakovenko in the first match of the fourth stage of Grand Prix and needs to win the match to keep his chances to play in the Candidates 2020.
Shakhriyar had quite deep preparation in the opening today and remembered the line in the Nimzo-Indian till the endgame. In the post-game interview, he pointed out that 22.Kf1 was a bad move and he had to play Re1, Nf1-Ne3 instead, keeping good chances. Dmitry Jakovenko agreed his position was unpleasant and was happy with the result.
Catalan Opening appeared in the game Yu Yangyi vs Wesley So. The American Grandmaster went for a pawn sacrifice and suddenly the position became very complex and tactical. Wesley thought there was enough compensation for equality and was not sure if Black could get a better position.
Wang Hao misplayed in the opening and let his opponent David Navara to get an advantage. David had more active pieces and was trying to use the weakness of b7 pawn but Wang Hao was defending quite well and managed to hold a draw.
Anish Giri mixed up the move order at the opening and decided to give an exchange, remembering the same idea in a different line. He thought his position is lost after c3 but nevertheless managed to defend after a long fight.
As Anish Giri and Wei Yi were the last to finish the game, Anish was asked if he thought It would be unfair to lose his game since other games finished in a draw. “That was the only thing that kept me going. I saw that everybody else made a draw. I thought maybe it`s today’s magic so I have to try to use it,” answered Anish.
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