Karjakin outplays Topalov in exciting game

Great game by Karjakin

Round 5 of the 2017 Shamkir International tournament saw an uncompromising struggle between former World Champion V. Topalov and vice-World Champion S.Karjakin. As is his style, Topalov played riskily with the Black pieces in a Caro-Kann, relying more on his fabulous intuition than on sound logic. Karjakin succeeded in navigating his way thru the resulting complications and found some devastating blows from which the Bulgarian could not recover. I give the game below as I know that my readers will appreciate the tactical finesses involved.

Both players now stand at 50% after 5 rounds.

Karjakin,S – V.Topalov Shamkir Rd5 25.04.2017

A fascinating postmortem, with Grandmaster Ljubojevic coordinating the analysis. Ljubojevic is one of the world’s top analysts and it is worth the readers’ time to listen attentively to his comments. Ljubo (as he is known) does not use a computer engine, preferring the old fashioned ‘human-think’.

The result is a pleasant contrast to the ‘all knowing’ silicon monster. Certainly there are more tactical imprecisions in the analysis, but these are the types of things that allows the reader a greater understanding of the position, and hence more opportunities to learn from. Computer analysis, in the form of a print-out of a multitude of variations, can never reproduce the thinking process so essential to a player making progress.