China’s Wei Yi narrowly failed on Friday in his attempt to reach the final stages of the $160,000 World Chess Cup in Baku and so become only the third player after Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen to reach the world title candidates at the age of 16.
The Beijing teenager showed great resilience and fast reactions under pressure as he won his first four matches, defeating his country’s No1 and world No8, Ding Liren, in the round of the last 16. In the quarter-finals he was up against the seven-time Russian champion Peter Svidler in an even encounter which went to five successive draws at classical, rapid and blitz chess before Svidler finally won.
The other hero of the concluding rounds was on nobody’s list. While the experienced favourites Vlad Kramnik, Veselin Topalov and Fabiano Caruana were all eliminated, the little-known Ukrainian Pavel Eljanov has produced the performance of his life. Many World Cup players halve out the two classical games and reserve their big effort for the speed chess tie-breaks but Eljanov has been deadly in classical. He won his first three rounds 2-0, drew the fourth 1-1 before winning the tie-break, and then upset the tournament favourite, the US champion, Hikaru Nakamura, in their first quarter-final game.
This 8/9 total gave Eljanov, at age 32, an Elo rating performance of 3060, the second best of all time after Caruana’s 3080 at St Louis 2014. His calm play then secured a draw which eliminated Nakamura.
The new favourite for the semi-finals will be Holland’s Anish Giri, only 21, already world No5, who has developed a quiet, subtle and deadly positional style and who hardly ever loses. Russia’s Sergey Karjakin, who was runner-up in the 2014 candidates, is also still in contention. The semi-finals, starting on Sunday, are Svidler v Giri and Eljanov v Karjakin.
Shak Mamedyarov was the last hometown Azeri left in the competition before he lost to Karjakin. Mamedyarov’s forte is attack and he showed his skills in knocking out Caruana by massing a large army on the h and g files where Caruana had no space to defend his king. White could even pass up the elegant 33 Bg7! in favour of a simpler approach.
Objectively, though, Caruana had a perfectly good opening and could have kept well in the game by 14...Nf4 with Nxe2 instead of allowing Bxh5 ruining his pawn structure. His subsequent play was also strangely passive, especially Rb8 and a6 and then b7-b6? instead of the normal b5.
Shak Mamedyarov v Fabiano Caruana
1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Bg5 Ne4 4 Bf4 c5 5 Qc2 Qa5+ 6 Nd2 f5 7 f3 Nf6 8 d5 d6 9 e4 Na6 10 Ne2 fxe4 11 fxe4 Bg7 12 Nc3 O-O 13 Be2 Nh5 14 Bg5 Qd8? 15 Bxh5 gxh5 16 Nf3 h6 17 Be3 Bg4 18 O-O e6 19 Qd2 Kh7 20 Rad1 e5 21 Rf2 Nc7 22 Rdf1 Rb8 23 h3 Bd7 24 Ne2 h4 25 Kh2 b6? 26 g3 hxg3+ 27 Nxg3 Rg8 28 Nh5 Ne8 29 Nxg7 Nxg7 30 Bxh6 Nh5 31 Ng5+ Kg6 32 Rg1 Qe7 33 Nf7+!? Kh7 34 Bg5 Qe8 35 Qe2 Ng7 36 Rf6 Rf8 37 Rh6+ Kg8 38 Bf6 Rxf7 39 Qh5 1-0
3409 (by Nicolo Belli) 1 Rh8. If g5 2 Qh1 g4 3 Ra8 g3 4 Qh8 mate. If Bxc2 2 Rh1+! (not 2 Qh1+? Bd1!) Bb1 3 Qg2 and 4 Qb2 mate.
