Berlin Candidates 2018 – Round 8

Almost all draws, but again we have to thank Vladimir Kramnik for the decisive game.

In the duel of the Americans we saw the Russian Defence (as the Petroff Defence is called in many languanges). I don’t think So and Caruana were influenced by the latest political developments between the two countries, as the defence has proven to be one of the most solid in chess and that is exactly what Caruana needs right now. No, his choice wasn’t surprising, So’s was. Did he really cannot find anything better than repeating Kramnik’s toothless choice of 5 Qe2 and the immediate endgame? If Caruana plays the Petroff, you can be sure that he has prepared for the endgame as well! As it turned out he was again close to win with Black, but So was precise and managed to draw. I think the popularity of the defence will only grow now. In the two games played Black could have won both and in fact scored 1.5/2!

Ding Liren and Aronian played a lively game. White decided to cling onto the c5-pawn and Black obtained active piece play. It seems that White missed a few more promising alternatives along the way. Here’s the game with analysis by GM Nedev and a few comments from me.

Mamedyarov and Karjakin drew in the main line of the Catalan with Karjakin again employing the fresh idea of 7…c6 he implemented in the game against Caruana in Round 5.

And of course, the game of the day, who else if not Kramnik. He employed his beloved Semi-Tarrasch against Grischuk, but this time it was him who was surprised by Grischuk’s rare idea.

And then, as they say, the rest is history. This time history repeating itself. The position was drawn, Kramnik, being a pawn down but with the bishop pair, could have drawn in more than one way on more than one occassion, but he kept on playing and playing and eventually blundered and lost. All this time he was looking for ways to play for a win. But he also admitted he was missing things. Over-confidence coupled with imprecise calculations and loss of objectivity is the worst possible combination in chess. Unfortunately my forecast from yesterday is already coming true as Kramnik is now on -1. And the downward spiral is not finishing any time soon.

Grischuk moved on +1 with the win and now there is no shared place from first to fourth. Caruana leads with 5.5, ahead of Mamedyarov on 5, Grischuk on 4.5 and Ding Liren on 4. Unless Ding Liren wins a game soon, probably the number of candidates to win will shrink to 3. But tomorrow we have Caruana-Ding Liren, which could provide some clarity in case of a decisive result.

Alex Colovic
A professional player, coach and blogger. Grandmaster since 2013.
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