In all three games of the final round Black was victorious: Radjabov beat Gelfand, Ponomariov beat Nisipeanu and Carlsen beat Wang Yue. This left the youngest player with the highest rating two full points clear of the field, with an incredible 2918 performance. That translates to a FIDE rating of 2826, the second highest in chess history. Final report with commentary by Dorian Rogozenco.
ROMGAZ and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade” of Bucharest are staging a double round robin tournament with six top GMs: the world's highest ranked player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who at the age of 19 has an Elo rating of 2813. Ukrainian GM Ruslan Ponomariov is a former FIDE knockout world champion; Boris Gelfand of Israel, winner of the FIDE World Cup in 2009; the top Chinese player Wang Yue; Teimour Radjabov, the second highest ranked player of Azerbaijan, and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, the best Romanian player. The competition is taking place from June 14th to 25th 2010 in Medias, Romania.
Round ten summary
By GM Dorian Rogozenco
Who could have guessed such results today? All three games of the last round in King’s Tournament finished with victories for Black! And how! White players didn’t have a chance!
Nispeanu lost in 23 moves against Ponomariov in a game that looks as an opening catastrophe. However, this won’t be very precise. Black got a pleasant position in the Four Knights Variation indeed, but the reason of White’s loss was a tactical mistake on move 17, after which White’s position collapsed surprisingly quickly.
Gelfand-Radjabov saw the King’s Indian, where it appeared first that White achieved an edge thanks to the centralised pieces. But starting with move 18 ... well, Gelfand said it himself: ”Everything went wrong. I played horrible today”. That was a very painful defeat for Boris, who otherwise played a very good tournament. By losing this last game versus Radjabov the Israeli also missed his chance to qualify in the Grand Slam Final tournament (most likely Radjabov will play there).
Finally, Wang Yue-Carlsen that lasted longer than other games didn’t differ much: here too White’s play was depressing. Carlsen equalized easily in the Gruenfeld Defence and then slowly, but firmly increased his slight advantage in endgame to take a full point and finish the tournament in great style: 5 wins and 5 draws. Actually this also reflects the draw ratio of the tournament: exactly half of the games were decisive, which is a good achievement at such level.
Radjabov, Teimour Ponomariov, Ruslan Carlsen, Magnus
Wang,Yue - Carlsen,Magnus [D85]
Kings' Tournament Medias Bazna/Romania (10), 25.06.2010 [Rogozenco]
Gelfand,Boris - Radjabov,Teimour [E94]
Kings' Tournament Medias Bazna/Romania (10), 25.06.2010 [Rogozenco]
Nisipeanu,Liviu Dieter - Ponomariov,Ruslan [C49]
Kings' Tournament Medias Bazna/Romania (10), 25.06.2010 [Rogozenco]
Final standings
StatisticsA highly unusual pie chart and unusual statistics: of the 30 games in this event:
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Source: Chessbase
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