The Week in Chess

The Superbet Chess Classic sprung to life in the second round with two decisive results, both involving the local players. It's always nice to see strong events have places and opportunities for local players, sometimes that's not a priority which is often a shame. In particular Bogdan-Daniel Deac seems ready to grab this opportunity with both hands.

Fabiano Caruana won fairly easily as white against Constantin Lupulescu. The game was a sharp French Defence with castling on opposite wings. The key moment seems to have been 17...Ba4? which allowed Caruana to win a clean pawn and take the Queens off. 17....e5 seems to have been the correct test of white's setup - 18. h5 exd4 19. hxg6 Qg5 20. f4 Qxg6 being a likely sequence. All quite hard to work out and perhaps Lupulescu tried to avoid this only to end up with a prospectless position instead.

Bogdan-Daniel Deac was a last minute substitute for Richard Rapport and after getting a winning chance in round 1 he actually did win in round 2, against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave with the black pieces. In another super sharp position MVL turned down a draw by repetition to find the aggressive 25.g4, Deac was squirming in his chair but still found the best response 25...b3 but still was under tremendous pressure, according to the computers 30.Qd3? was the turning point, 30.Qe6 with some pretty wild play was best, Deac found the only move for the advantage 30....Rf5! after which MVL was in desperate trouble, 37.Rcc2 was the decisive error after which Deac won in only a few more moves.

The remaining games were drawn. So-Aronian was a Ragozin with castling on opposite sides but steady exchanges led to equality and a draw in 34 moves. Teimour Radjabov achieved fairly easy equality on the black side of a Catalan against Anish Giri, a draw by repetition in 30 moves followed. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov didn't manage any advantage in a Symmetrical English and once Queens came off a draw was all but inevitable.

Round 2 Standings: 1st Deac 1.5pts, 1st Caruana 1.5pts, 3rd Radjabov 1pt, 3rd Giri 1pt, 5th Mamedyarov 1pt, 5th So 1pt, 7th Grischuk 1pt, 7th Aronian 1pt, 9th Lupulescu 0.5pts, 9th MVL 0.5pts.

Round 3 Pairings Monday 7th June 2021: Grischuk-So, Deac-Mamedyarov, Radjabov-MVL, Lupulescu-Giri, Aronian-Caruana.