Armenia’s top grandmaster Levon Aronian started with a draw against Russian rival Alexander Grischuk in their four-game quarterfinal match at the World Candidates’ Tournament in Kazan, Russia.
The knockout tournament (May 3-27) brings together eight of the world’s leading grandmasters (with Aronian having the highest FIDE rating among them) and will decide the challenger to play for the chess crown against current Indian holder Viswanathan Anand next year.
In the first of the scheduled four games in the quarterfinal against Grischuk on Thursday Aronian played with white pieces and stayed active throughout the game, giving all sorts of problems for the Russian grandmaster to solve up until a position of a nearly sure win.
Almost seven hours into the game, the whites, still seeking a killer move, at one point let the blacks get back into the game with a 50-50 draw chance and subsequently also into the match. After 70 exchanges of moves -- with both players experiencing time trouble – Aronian had to settle for only a draw and now faces a tough second round game on Friday where he plays with blacks. (Later on Friday Aronian ended the second round game in a draw managing to defend from a possible attack by Grischuk.)
The best-of-four quarterfinal match ends on May 8 (with a possible tiebreak option on May 9) and its winner progresses to the semifinal to meet the winner of the Vladimir Kramnik (Russian) v Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan) quarterfinal match. The other two quarterfinal pairs are Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) v Gata Kamsky (USA) and Boris Gelfand (Israel) v Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan). (All four games on the opening day of the tournament ended in draws).
Aronian’s previous attempt to become a challenger to the holder of the world chess crown in 2007 ended in a failure as he finished only seventh out of eight players in the candidates’ tournament.
(Check the Tournament’s official website at http://kazan2011.fide.com for the latest scores and information).
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