2008 Corus in high gear!
Corus Chess Lane in Wijk an Zee. Photo from chessvista.com.
Teimour Radjabov is often criticized for his tournament strategies, but his standing in Corus so far has been one of fortune. Radjabov has scored success with the King’s Indian but today it would be the Benoni-type of position against Pavel Eljanov of the Ukraine. Radjabov analyzes his games below:
With the above win, Radjabov moves into a tie for the lead with Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian on 4-2 (+2). Etienne Bacrot of France leads the “B” group on 4-2 while IM Arik Braun of Germany leads the “C” group on 4½-1½. Other action… Dimitri Reinderman of the Netherlands no doubt saw Pontus Carlsson’s Dragon breathing fire and decided on a different setup. He castled kingside, played Re1 and retreated with Nf3 and Bf1. These are not normal moves against the Dragon, but perhaps they forced Carlsson to spend a lot of time trying to find the right plan. Carlsson sacrificed a pawn with 24…b5 25.Nxc4 Qxc4 (25…Nf4!?) 26.Nxb5 and later fell into a terrible bind. Unable to unravel from white’s strangle hold, he apparently ran short of time and fell into a mating net. Carlsson will face 2nd place Fabiano Caruana tomorrow. No pictures of him playing yet. Official site: https://www.coruschess.com/
Related links taken from TWIC…
Fred Lucas takes many photos at the event: https://www.fredlucas.eu/.
Frits Agterdenbos has daily photo reports: https://www.chessvista.com/.
Commentary: https://www.chessdom.com/.
Chess Videos: https://www.chessvibes.com/. ICC – https://www.chessclub.com/ has daily live coverage.
Etienne Bacrot annotates his own games: https://www.chess22.fr/
Ian Rogers blogging from Wijk: https://main.uschess.org/