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Report of the Day 2 of Blindfold |
 On the second day of blindfold the sole leader of the tournament Levon Aronian made two draws against Peter Leko and Teimour Radjabov and defeated Wang Hao. 5, 5 out of 7 turned to be enough for the first place in the tournament as the closest rival of Levon at that time Hikaru Nakamura failed to win in the last round against Liren Ding and finished the tournament on the second place. As a result, American player won three silver medals in the Mind Games! Peter Leko had good chances for the medals but lost the last game against American Gata Kamsky. Despite the victory over Hungarian player Gata Kamsky finished behind on tie-break points of Azeri player Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
In women section the leader of the previous day Viktorija Cmilyte started the second day with the victory over Humpy Koneru. Viktorija made two draws in the sixth and seventh rounds but unexpectedly it turned to be not enough for the gold medal. Former world champion Hou Yifan showed fantastic result on the second day and won three last games to become the winner of blindfold! Anna Zatonskih made 2,5 out of 3 in the last rounds and grabbed the bronze medal.
Our congratulations for the winners!
Some interesting moments from the day 2 chosen by Bartek Heberla.
Karjakin -Ding
In this position black is in serious trouble, however in blindfold chess it’s not a time to resign yet!
1…Nef5!? Very tricky move, the last chance…
2.Qxb5??
and now instead of recapture, black is simply giving mate
2…Rg2+ 3.Kh1 Ng3x!
The round 6 became unfortunate for the queens of Laurent Fressinet and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who blundered their strongest piece in one move.
Giri-Fressinet
In this position Fressinet was probably sure that white king is on g1.
He started with 1…Rh3?! 2.Bxh3 Ne2 (+?!) However it appears that there is no check, so after 3.Qxd6 he had to resign.
Zatonskih - Koneru
Except the blunders typical for blindfold chess, we could have also observe some brilliant maneuvers:
1.Be5+! forcing pawn endgame winning for white
1…Bxe5 2.fxe5 Kxe5 3.g4! Stopping f5, now white is just taking the pawn on b3, while black can’t touch white pawns (Kxe4 4.d6 and white is promoting a queen)
1:0
Kosteniuk-Zatonskih
This game should have ended in a draw, as white could just sacrifice a rook for the passed pawn and exchange all the pawns on the queenside.
But after so tiring game, Kosteniuk simply forgot about the rook:
1.Kc5?? Kxg2 0:1 |
