The 28th Sigeman & Co. tournament has gotten off to an excellent start, with six decisive games out of eight. The start so far is 16-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh, who is now up to #15 in the world. (If he wins his next game he’ll probably jump to #12, leapfrogging Alexander Grischuk, Levon Aronian, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.)
The game that most caught my eye today was Gukesh’s win over Vincent Keymer (only 18-years-old himself), an impressive win that shows the dangers Black can suffer in the Ruy if he brings too many pieces to the queenside. (This game too will be covered in one of my forthcoming ChessLecture shows.) With the win, Gukesh is in clear first, but it’s early yet. Three players are half a point behind: Nils Grandelius, who defeated Arjun Erigaisi; Peter Svidler, who defeated Boris Gelfand (more on that below); and youngest-ever-GM Abhimanyu Mishra, who gave Jorden Van Foreest his second loss.
About the Gelfand game: Tigran Petrosian (the former world champion) was one of his teachers when he (Gelfand) was young, but in at least one respect the two players are very different. Petrosian was pragmatic almost to a fault, while Gelfand is very principled. If he thinks a move is best, he’ll play it even if it’s very risky. When he’s in good form, as back in his salad days when he came extremely close to defeating Viswanathan Anand for the world championship, it makes him a fearsome player. When he’s not, it’s a prescription for trouble.
In this tournament, it has been a double helping of trouble.
In round 1 the greedy 10.Bb5, looking to round up the c-pawn was objectively best, but 10.Bg2 would have given him a small edge with minimal risk. His move wasn’t bad, but it created a danger-prone position that creaked after 17.Qe3? and collapsed after 20.Nxd5? Today against Svidler we saw more of the same. His ambitious pawn play was objectively justified, but again he wound up in a position where a single mistake could be his last. This time it was 32.Bxe5?; 32.Bxd7 would have retained equality, but his exchange left him with an immediately lost position thanks to his colossally weak dark squares.
We’ll see if he plays more stably and less ambitiously in round 3. For his sake, I hope so.
Thanks for covering this event, with Superbet coming up it may be largely ignored by commercial sites.
"the dangers Black can suffer in the Ruy if he brings too many pieces to the queenside". Might be interesting to compare Gukesh-Keymer 1-0 with Praggnanandhaa-Keymer 1-0 from WR Chess Masters (which you had annotated). Less similarities than I thought from memory, but arguably some ... and also differences. In the previous game:
- the black bishop went to e7 and back to f8 rather than c5 and b6, thus staying on the kingside.
- 23.Bxh6 wasn't decisive, while now 22.Bxh6 was at least the beginning of the end.
- black could at least open up the queenside (now nothing ever really happened on the queenside). But in a way it backfired as the white rook could - typical for the Ruy Lopez - enter via the a-file (Gukesh didn't aim for this resource, see 13.Rad1).
- black should have played d6-d5 but never did, now he played 20.-d5 but at least the timing was wrong.
In any case, Keymer and his coach Leko - but also anyone playing the Ruy Lopez with either color - may benefit from checking both games again.
As to Gelfand: he now faces co-tailender Jorden van Foreest who also paid the prize so far for risky chess. We'll see how they approach their game. Their fate so far may be for different reasons: Gelfand strives for the best move that may - or may not - lead to complications. van Foreest looks for the "most dynamic move or plan" - good or bad, always risky?