EVERYTHING FOR THE CROWN

According to the results of the 11th tour of the Chess Grand Prix in Sochi, the Azerbaijani grand masters Teymur Racabov and Vuqar Hasimov have lost their leading positions in the tournament.

The Azerbaijani grandmasters Teymur Racabov and Vuqar Hasimov continue to press their claims to the world chess crown. The second stage of the FIDE Grand Prix has just started in Sochi and our chess players aim to be among the medallists.

Their performances at the tournament yielded similar results. After 10 tours, they both gained six points each and had wonderful chances of winning.

The favourite, game-wise

After 10 rounds Racabov was among the leaders again. After defeating the Bulgarian Ivan Cheparinov, who played black and was, before this defeat, the undisputed leader of the tournament, our player joined the leaders himself. Though he was beaten by the Chinese chess player Wang Yue soon, Teymur managed to correct the situation and gain the maximum number of points in a game with David Navarra. Then events began to unfold at a very fast pace because.

It is notable that in Sochi, Teymur beat those who beat him in the first stage of the Chess Grand Prix in Baku. Cheparinov and Navarra who beat our grand master in Azerbaijan lost to him in the next tournament. So the victory in Sochi was a revenge of sorts, although it must be said that the outcome of the game was uncertain until the last moment, after Racabov made a gaffe from a winning position. Luckily, he managed to redeem the situation and push his opponent, who played quite well throughout the tournament, towards defeat.  "As is usually the case when the anti-Moscow gambit is played, the game turned out to be difficult and interesting. Going back to summarise the game, it can be said that neither of the players has managed to demonstrate a profound knowledge of the gambit and the freestyle game began at quite an early stage. After a questionable 15th move by black, it seemed that Teymur would win easily, but he made a gaffe and turned everything upside down.  Ivan seized the initiative, but in a frenzy of time problems, he made a gross mistake in a very difficult situation, and it was all over." These comments on the game were from grandmaster Konstantin Sakayev, commentator for the chesspro.ru website. But later, in the second stage, Teymur tied with Ukrainian Vasiliy Ivanchuk and lost his leadership.

Compared to the Baku phase of the tournament, almost half of the participants in the Russian tournament were new: Vasiliy Ivanchuk, Levon Aronyan, Boris Gelfand, Dmitriy Yakovenko and Muhammad Al-Modiaki all made their first appearance at the tournament in Sochi.

Ratings-wise, Ivanchuk was clear favourite, although it is not at all certain that the Ukrainian will win; in the end it is not the rating, but the actual games that count. The winner is the grandmaster who manages to perform steadily throughout the tournament. Racabov seems to be a genuine contender because, although he underperformed in the first phase of the Grand Prix, he is now trying to play much better.

He started very well by defeating Al-Modiaki from Qatar. And although a number of specialists did not expect much from the Qatari, Teymur dismissed the term "outsider" as applied to Al-Modiaki.  He noted that "these days, everyone spends about 20 hours a day playing against a computer and can therefore beat anyone else." The players' positions for most of the game were completely equal and had it not been for Mohammad's time problems, Teymur, as he admitted himself, would have had a lot of trouble winning.

Not thinking about ratings

Hasimov, who played draws with Cheparinov, Gelfand, Grishchuk and Racabov, is in an indeterminate position. But he beat Muhammad Al-Modiaki from Qatar, which gave him a sense of confidence. All his games were quite aggressive. Vuqar was the focus of attention for the experts because of his phenomenally good play in Baku, where he won against Aleksandr Grishchuk, Petr Svidler and the current World Cup holder Gata Kamskiy, and ultimately he won the tournament. The Grand Prix in Sochi was a test of stability and a qualitatively different test of abilities for Hasimov. The winner of the six-stage Grand Prix would qualify to play the winner of the World Cup in 2009 for the title of world champion and Vuqar, together with Wang Yue and Magnus Karlsen, was one of the leading contenders after the first stage.

It is notable that before the tournament in Sochi Vuqar was successful at the Karpov Tournament in Poykovskoye, in which he was third. He admitted that the tournament was a rehearsal for the Grand Prix and was generally successful. "It was important for me to test my strength before the Sochi tournament. I took part in the Russian championship in Dagomys, which was an important part of my training. I was not involved in any tournaments for three months so, even in the event of an unsuccessful performance in Poykovskoye, I would not be particularly upset. But the tournament showed that I am in good shape and I want to demonstrate this in Sochi," Hasimov said.

The grandmaster added that he does not think about the ratings very much, despite the fact that he is among FIDE's best 20 players. "If you become a hostage to your thoughts about ratings, your rating usually starts to fall. I know this from my own experience; after all in the past I once gained 84 rating points, but then lost them. In short, thinking about ratings hinders me from performing well, so it is better just to get to the table and play," Vuqar said. At the same time, he has broadened his repertoire of openings, especially Ruy Lopez. "Thanks to this, I managed to beat Ruslan Ponomarev and Aleksandr Grishchuk. Although I had some problems in the past playing white, I have now resolved this problem. And statistics are stubborn things:  I played white in all six of my winning games at the Poykovskoye Grand Prix," he said.

Unfortunately, Vuqar Hasimov failed to retain his leadership in the tournament after he lost to Russian Dmitriy Yakovenko.

Whatever it is, the Azerbaijani grand masters still have a chance of winning.

Improving components of his game 

Regardless of the result, Racabov's appearance at the FIDE Grand Prix in Sochi opened an event-rich second half of the season, in which he will play in the Grand Slam finals, the Club Champions Cup and as a team member at the Dresden tournament. That is why at this stage, he is more concerned about the quality of his game, which, in his opinion, has improved. "It seems to me that I am playing better because, in retrospect, my games have been of quite high-quality and high-level. I am making fewer mistakes, but I still have a lot of work to do, especially on how to convert my game play into points scored. After all, sometimes it is not the quality of the game, but a single correct decision which leads to victory. If you play great games but cannot win, this is a problem; chess these days requires both physical fitness and psychological stability, because many psychological factors affect the results. In other words, from the point of view of game play and quality, I have entered a new phase but, at the same time, I have to work on the psychological issues," Racabov said.

Teymur is also working on different combinations and surprise moves, but he does not want to use them just yet - for a reason. "There are a certain number of openings which I plan to add to my repertoire. But again, it will become clear during the tournaments how necessary or effective this is going to be and whether it will affect the result, because the standard openings I use have helped me into the FIDE top 10. Perhaps it would make more sense to work more on some other aspects of the game than openings. Because I have failed to pick up quite a few points from advantageous positions, including from the openings I currently use. For example, I lost a number of games when playing white which I was supposed to win. If I had won all those points in those games, I would probably not even be thinking now about new openings. But because of my bad luck, I have to look at what I should do next. Perhaps I should analyze the situation carefully - my busy schedule makes it impossible to prepare thoroughly for tournaments. That is why to say that I have drawn clear-cut conclusions is also out of the question," the grandmaster said. And he was right; Timur had a very busy first half of the year: he played at the blitz chess World Cup in Odessa, tournaments in Linarez-Morelia and Weyk-an-See, the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku, the M-Tel Masters in Sofia, and the Russian Championship in Dagomys. And there are so many more to come...