Kosteniuk, Martirosyan Only Winners On Peaceful Day At FIDE World Cup

GM Haik Martirosyan defeated GM Amin Tabatabaei in what was the only decisive game in the open section of the FIDE World Cup on Sunday. The women’s section had just one winner as well: GM Alexandra Kosteniuk survived a lost position and ended up beating GM Valentina Gunina.

Was it the matchup of stronger players, the growing tension, the drawish nature of the game, or all of the above?

Whatever it was, we suddenly saw 10 out of 12 games at the World Cup in Sochi ending in draws.

Before moving on to the games, let’s start with this super cute moment from the Chess.com live broadcast, where co-commentator GM Vishy Anand’s son Akhil suddenly popped into the show for a bit:

Well, we all know @vishy64theking‘s son’s favorite is…

You win this round, @ChessKidcom #FIDEWorldCup pic.twitter.com/0MpRsaoxcD

— Chess.com (@chesscom)

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Among the 24 players still left playing, the first two to finish were GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and GM Sergey Karjakin. The latter showed deep preparation in the Berlin endgame and equalized comfortably with a pawn sacrifice that he played after just seven seconds. Karjakin followed up with six more quick moves before spending a few minutes to close the game completely.

19-year-old GM Andrey Esipenko drew quite comfortably as Black against World Champion Magnus Carlsen. The game was highly anticipated because of Esipenko’s win against Carlsen in Wijk aan Zee earlier this year but finished rather quickly as well. If anyone was better, it was Esipenko:

Even more impressive was how GM Velimir Ivic held the draw vs. GM Vladimir Fedoseev. Using the Grunfeld, the 18-year-old Serbian GM got into a four vs. three rook endgame almost straight from the opening and successfully defended it to reach a draw on move 60. 

Speaking of defense, there was also GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda keeping his cool against an attacking GM Alexander Grischuk: “To be honest, I quite liked my position the entire game,” said Duda, who would have liked to continue the game but couldn’t find a good way to avoid the perpetual.

Arguably the most interesting of the draws was the one between GM Vidit Gujrathi and GM Vasif Durarbayli, which started with the quiet Exchange Slav but soon turned into a rather sharp middlegame. Right there, it looks like both players overlooked a close to winning possibility for White, and later in the game, it was Black who got close to the full point:

The only decisive game could easily have finished in a draw as well. Tabatabaei, who had sacrificed a pawn before, avoided a move repetition on move 27 as he was still more active in the ensuing endgame. However, Martirosyan managed to free himself, and then his extra pawn started to tell:

Results round of 16

The women’s tournament is one round ahead of the open. The first day of the quarterfinals saw a great fighting game between GM Alexandra Kosteniuk and GM Valentina Gunina, where the latter was doing very well and missed several wins, before eventually losing herself as she overpressed in a drawn endgame with queens and opposite-colored bishops:

Results quarterfinals

The FIDE World Cup takes place in the Galaxy Leisure Complex in Sochi, Russia, until August 6, 2021. Each round consists of two classical games and, if necessary, a rapid/blitz tiebreak on the third day. The Open section began round two with 128 players and the women’s section, 64.

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