Aronian defeats Karjakin’s Berlin

Battle of Berlin continues in Zagreb

The Zagreb leg of Rex Sinquefield’s ‘Grand Chess Tour’ is proving to be the most exciting of the events up to now. The players are being serious and fighting in every game.

It is encouraging that one does not need to sink to artificial ‘Armageddon’ tie-breaks or extravagent ‘3-1-0’ Ponzi-type point schemes to attract the public interest. All that is necessary is for the professional players to behave professionally…and play real chess!

The Battle of Berlin

Yesterday’s 6th round saw Berlin-heavyweight Levon Aronian playing White against fellow Berlin-heavyweight Sergey Karjakin’s Berlin. Both are arguably the world’s leading experts on the Berlin Defense from either side: Aronian has some 158 games in this opening, with 43 of these games featuring the Queenless ending.

Karjakin, for his part, has 192 games of which 67 feature the Queenless ending. Yesterday’s game was the 4th such ending between these two giants, and the record is that none of these games have ended in a draw! Aronian’s win yesterday puts the score 3 to 1 in his favour…

gm Aronian,L – gm Karjakin,S
Zagreb 1.7.2019
(1-0)

Aronian’s first victory in the Zagreb tournament! Hardly a perfect game, but sometimes a win is worth more than 1 point.