Chess World Cup 2017 Round 5 Game 1 - Tblisi

Oh dear, what happened to the Chucky that took out Kramnik and Giri along the way. Instead of having the slug fest that we were all expecting, Chucky got blown away by a very well prepared and motivated Aronian.

It all looked bleak straight out of the opening. As black, if you play your knight to D7 and your rook to c8, then you need a pawn on c5 to at least have some pressure directed at the center. But Chucky’s pawn was still back on c6. So when Aronian played 10. d5, Ivanchuk sunk deep into thought for 42 minutes before half reluctantly reaching out to play c5 and salvage something from his broken position.

From there it was all down hill and all over after only 24 moves.

The other three games ended in draws

Here are the full results of Round 5, game 1.

Svidler, Peter 2756 (16) vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2804 (8) 0.5-0.5

Levon Aronian 2802 (5) vs Vassily Ivanchuk 2727 1-0

Vladimir Fedoseev 2731 vs Wesley So 2792 (2) 0.5-0.5

Richard Rapport 2675 vs Liren Ding 2771 (11) 0.5-0.5

Aronian,Levon (2802) - Ivanchuk,Vassily (2727)

FIDE World Cup 2017 Tbilisi (5.1), 15.09.2017

1.c4 e6 2.g3 d5 3.Bg2 dxc4 4.Qa4+ c6 [4...Nd7 5.Qxc4 c5 6.Nf3 Ngf6 7.0–0 b6 8.Nd4 Ne5 9.Nc6 Nxc4 10.Nxd8 Nd5 11.Nc3 Kxd8 12.Nxd5 Bb7 13.Nc3 Bxg2 14.Kxg2 Be7 15.Rd1 Bf6 16.d4 Ke7 17.dxc5 Bxc3 18.bxc3 bxc5 19.Kf3 1/2–1/2 (19) Aronian,L (2785)-Cheparinov,I (2689) Doha 2016] 5.Qxc4 b5 6.Qc2 A13: English Opening: 1...e6 

6...Bb7 7.Nf3 Nd7 8.Nc3 LiveBook: 4 Games. The position is equal. 

8...Rc8 9.0–0 a6 

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10.d4 c5 11.d5! exd5 12.Nh4! Ndf6N [12...Ngf6=] 

13.Rd1± g6 

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14.Nxd5! Nxd5 [14...Bxd5 15.e4] 

15.e4 Bg7 16.exd5 

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 Strongly threatening d6. 

16...Nf6 17.Qe2+ Kf8 18.a4 b4 19.Be3 Qd6 20.Rac1 

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Threatens to win with Bh3. 

20...Nd7 [20...Kg8± keeps fighting.] 

21.Nf3 h6 22.Nd2 Kg8 23.Ne4 Qf8 24.d6 Precision: White = 92%, Black = 22%. 1–0