Delhi 2018 Round 07: Naiditsch and Karthikeyan!
The seventh round of the Delhi International 2018 began with three leaders Arkadij Naiditsch, Karthikeyan Murali and Ziaur Rahman. We are now down to two leaders - Arkadij Naiditsch and Karthikeyan Murali. Both of them will face off against each other in the eighth round of the Delhi International 2018. The Delhi Open is turning into a hotbed for Indian players to show their skills against International opponents. Local talents like Arjun Tiwari, Nubairshah Shaikh, Aditya Mittal, Ankit Gajwa, and many others are doing exceedingly well. We have the full round seven report.
The true champions are the ones who pace themselves well in the tournament. Very often we see outstanding performances by underdogs at the start of the event, but by the end of it they burn out. For players who are strong and who keep an aim to win a tournament, this does not happen. This is because they are hungry for victory and put their maximum efforts in crucial rounds. Mainly they aren't satisfied. This could be the major difference between Ziaur Rahman and Arkadij Naiditsch when they sat opposite each other at the start of the seventh round. Naiditsch was hungry to win, while Ziaur Rahman already has had a great tournament with wins over Tran Tuan Minh and Farrukh Amonatov.
Ziaur Rahman has shown phenomenal form at this event. However, in the seventh he just didn't find his feet against the top seeded Arkadij Naiditsch. What went wrong? Let's have a look:
When I saw this position I felt that White is better. He has more space, and the d6 pawn looks weak. All in all in seemed like an uphill task for Black to defend this position. First of all, this evaluation is incorrect as the engines show. Secondly, Karthikeyan was immediately able to solve some of his problems by playing the move ...d5-d5! But the thing to note is that even if he didn't play this move, this position is not so bad for Black as he these irritating moves like Bg5, he also can jump to e5 with his knight and in general probe White's position.
Abhijeet came to the studio when the live commentary was in progress and one the viewers asked the question - Is it better for a chess player to marry a chess player, or a non chess player! We posed this question to Abhijeet Gupta and at the same time Bharat Singh Chauhan also entered the studio. Don't miss this funny conversation:
We had Andrei Deviatkin in the studio and he showed us one of his favourite wins of his career against GM Ernesto Inarkiev. It featured a novelty that he had prepared at home without the use of a computer engine:
Results of Round 7
Rank after round 7
Rk. | SNo | Name | sex | FED | Rtg | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | ||
1 | 1 | GM | Naiditsch Arkadij | AZE | 2701 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 29,0 | 32,5 | ||
2 | 8 | GM | Karthikeyan Murali | IND | 2580 | 6,5 | 0,0 | 26,5 | 29,0 | ||
3 | 23 | GM | Rahman Ziaur | BAN | 2472 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 30,0 | 33,0 | ||
4 | 42 | IM | Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh | IND | 2380 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 29,5 | 32,0 | ||
5 | 7 | GM | Tiviakov Sergei | NED | 2584 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 32,5 | ||
6 | 16 | GM | Vaibhav Suri | IND | 2542 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 32,0 | ||
7 | 12 | GM | David Alberto | ITA | 2553 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 31,5 | ||
8 | 71 | Koustav Chatterjee | IND | 2288 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,5 | 31,0 | |||
9 | 6 | GM | Sengupta Deep | IND | 2586 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 28,0 | 30,5 | ||
10 | 2 | GM | Amonatov Farrukh | TJK | 2636 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 30,0 | ||
5 | GM | Rozum Ivan | RUS | 2595 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 30,0 | |||
12 | 35 | Akash Pc Iyer | IND | 2415 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 27,0 | 29,5 | |||
13 | 26 | IM | Vignesh N R | IND | 2470 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 26,5 | 29,5 | ||
14 | 18 | GM | Pruijssers Roeland | NED | 2536 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 26,0 | 29,5 | ||
15 | 13 | GM | Sivuk Vitaly | UKR | 2550 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 26,0 | 29,0 | ||
16 | 32 | GM | Dzhumaev Marat | UZB | 2434 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 23,5 | 26,5 | ||
17 | 30 | IM | Harsha Bharathakoti | IND | 2451 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 23,0 | 25,5 | ||
18 | 24 | GM | Deviatkin Andrei | RUS | 2471 | 5,5 | 0,0 | 23,0 | 25,0 | ||
19 | 49 | Sammed Jaykumar Shete | IND | 2337 | 5,0 | 0,0 | 29,5 | 32,0 | |||
20 | 14 | GM | Tran Tuan Minh | VIE | 2548 | 5,0 | 0,0 | 29,0 | 32,0 |