Ivanchuk Avenges in Moscow
August 18, 2008
talmempic.jpgVassily Ivanchuk avenged his loss to Gata Kamsky in the Sochi Grand Prix with a win in round 1 of Tal Memorial (Moscow, Aug 18-29) Keep following the games on the Internet Chess Club , the official website as well as CLO because World Champ semi-finalist Kamsky has plenty of chances to comeback in the 10 player round-robin. 

Kamsky defeated Navara in a topical exchange Grunfeld line to end on a high note in Sochi , but today Ivanchuk chose the Russian variation of the Grunfeld. He won an important pawn after 24...g6 25. Nc6 (Fritz recommends the funny-looking but much better 24...Nb8!), after which Kamsky was finished.  Ivanchuk could not take the pawn earlier with 18. Nxa7 in view of 18...Rxc1 19.Rxc1 d4 20. Bd2 Qa8. Here are the games from Sochi and Moscow. We hope Kamsky will get another shot at Ivanchuk soon- perhaps in Dresden?

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The two other big winners today were top-seeds and rating twins Vladimir Kramnik and Alexander Morozevich.

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Tal Memorial

 Standings after Round 1

 1-3 -GM Vladimir Kramnik  RUS 2788, GM Alexander Morozevich  RUS 2788 and GM Vassily Ivanchuk  UKR 2781- 1.0 

4-7- GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov AZE 2742, GM Peter Leko HUN 2741, GM Ruslan Ponomariov UKR 2718 and GM Boris Gelfand ISR 2720-0.5
 8-10- GM Alexei Shirov ESP 2741, GM Gata Kamsky  USA 2723 and GM Evgeny Alekseev RUS 2708