Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
The Final stage of the Rapid Tournament in Aeroflot had a lot of interesting games. The amount of exciting and strange games was higher due to the faster time control. Fortunately, there was no lack of fighting spirit.
A game that immediately catches the eye is Wang Hao – Dmitry Andreikin. The Nimzo-Indian used by the Russian invited Hao to close the position and avoid every possible pawn confrontation, so there were no pawn exchanges during the first 82(!!) moves. Just 6 moves later, Wang Hao proved that his passed h-pawn was stronger than Andreikin’s piece advantage and closed the game with decisive score.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov showed his usual sharp play to beat Le Quang Liem in a very entertaining game. The Vietnamese chose his usual Slav Defense and Mamedyarov immediately went for a kingside attack with some sacrifices. Le’s king remained in the center and that was enough for the Azerbaijani to take the full point.
The field has been cut in half and next rounds will be exciting. Follow the games live with analysis.
More updates regarding today’s round will be available soon on Chessdom.com.
