The Week in Chess

Dmitry Andreikin could hardly believe his progress since last year when he was considering not even trying to qualify for the Russian Championship he subsequently won. Now Andreikin plays in the FIDE World Cup final in Tromso and becomes a World Championship Candidate following a day of rapid tie-breaks.

Andreikin defeated Evgeny Tomashevsky, who has really impressed in the World Cup too, in the second rapid game after an easy draw in the first. In a Chebanenko Slav with white Andreikin was in danger of being worse having slightly lost the thread but as is well known giving your opponent ambitions can also be a good way of getting chances yourself. 28...Re1 was an error and after 32...Qxd4 Andreikin was close to winning. The final error was 39...Qh7 after which Tomashevsky was getting mated.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave put on a brave face after being defeated by Vladimir Kramnik but he must have been disappointed with the way his tie-break match went. With white he mixed his moved order playing 13.Qc2?! rather than the intended 13.exd6 first. Vachier-Lagrave quickly started to go seriously wrong after 15...Qh4 gave Kramnik at least equality, 17.Re4 was a further mistake and in a deriorating situation 21.Rh4 lost out of hand. In the second game Kramnik hoovered off the pieces and although in danger of being worse at first was close to winning when the draw was agreed.

The semi-final results mean that Dmitry Andreikin and Vladimir Kramnik join Veselin Topalov, Levon Aronian and the loser of the coming World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen in the 2014 Candidates. Kramnik was already certain to be a Candidate by rating but having qualified as World Cup finalist this means that Sergey Karjakin now takes this place and qualifies along with Aronian by rating. Topalov has qualified by winning the FIDE Grand Prix. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov occupies second place in the Grand Prix standings but Alexander Grischuk or Fabiano Caruana can overtake him if they win the final event in Paris. In addition the organisers of the 2014 Candidates (bids at least from Khanty-Mansiysk in Russia and Bulgaria, presumably Sofia have already reported as being tabled) get to nominate a player.

The World Cup final is over 4 games followed by tie-breaks if necessary. Thursday is the first full and only rest day of the event. Final starts Friday 30th August and Kramnik has white against Dmitry Andreikin. Andreikin has a 2-0 classical score against Kramnik but in interview this sounded more like motivation than a worry for Kramnik.