Keymer, Korobov On 2/2, To Meet In Round 3 In Malmo

GM Anton Korobov and GM Vincent Keymer are still on perfect scores after two rounds at the 2024 TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament, and the two leaders will play each other on Monday. While Keymer defeated GM Nils Grandelius, Korobov was too strong for GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi.

Like the Frenchman, Women's World Champion GM Ju Wenjun started with two losses as she went down against GM Peter Svidler. Also on the second day, there was one draw, in the game between top-10 GMs Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Arjun Erigaisi. 

The third round starts Monday, April 29, at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST / 18:30 IST.

Results

Standings

It's a rare statistic for a strong chess tournament such as this one: six out of eight games have ended decisively. Things are likely to calm down a bit as the tournament progresses, but so far we cannot complain about the results or the games in Malmo.

Keymer was the first to reach that nice 2/2 score thanks to another excellent win, this time against the local participant. Grandelius played a remarkable setup in the Semi-Slav with an early ...a6 and then also ...b6, a fresh idea apparently mentioned in his (very) recently published Chessable course. 

"He's not only trying to win his game, but he's also trying to sell his course!" says Fressinet.

Grandelius is playing a line he recommends on @chessable apparently!https://t.co/fdqjyaaRHz pic.twitter.com/5rdwsCfBHV

— chess24 (@chess24com) April 28, 2024

Keymer had likely seen it because he clearly was ready. Both played their first 20 (!) moves very quickly.

Position after 20.Rd4.

After the game, Keymer said that his opponent had told him that he had the position after 20.Rd4 on his laptop 10 minutes before the start of the game: "I just finished after 19.Rad1 when I saw some 0.50, 0.20. I knew that if Black is perfectly precise, he will probably equalize, but it looked like the kind of position where Black takes the bigger risk."

It looks like Grandelius forgot what the notes on his laptop said about his 20th move because what he played was not good. When another inaccuracy followed a few moves later, Keymer's activity and threats forced Grandelius to give up material, and he remained under strong pressure and soon collapsed.

"He just fell victim to trying to remember stuff," said Keymer. "I think it's one of the most dangerous things, if you have an idea of what you might have checked but don't really remember, because that usually leads to mixing up everything up completely. I don't think he would have gotten such a bad position so quickly if he didn't have some motifs in his head that were working in one very specific moment but here not really."

I think it's one of the most dangerous things, if you have an idea of what you might have checked but don't really remember, because that usually leads to mixing up everything up completely.
—Vincent Keymer

GM Dejan Bojkov analyzes the Game of the Day below. 

A few hours later, Korobov joined Keymer in the lead with his win against Maurizzi, his fourth in as many games against the young Frenchman (the most recent being in Wijk aan Zee this year). Also for Maurizzi, it seems that something went wrong in the preparation because he didn't get much out of the opening (an Open Catalan), and his new move wasn't better than what had been played before.

Korobov ended up with an extra pawn and also three pawns on the queenside versus one, something that's just very tough to defend against. As soon as the pawns started rolling, the game seemed decided, although Maurizzi fought like a lion for many more moves.

The story of Svidler's win, which he showed in the live broadcast of the tournament, started on move one. He didn't want to play his usual Grunfeld and hoped to tempt his opponent into a Pirc, so against 1.d4 he played 1...d6. He soon regretted not starting with 1...g6 as he realized the particular line he wanted to play could more easily be avoided after 1...d6, namely with 2.g3, which Ju did!

As it went, she got a slight edge and showed ambition by leaving her e-pawn on its starting square and executing a knight maneuver intended to put pressure on Black's queenside. "The good thing about my opponent is that she plays solid lines, but she plays for the win," said Svidler.

The game turned around completely on move 14, when the Chinese GM made the odd decision of taking her queen back to d1, something that resembles panic after likely missing Black's 13th move. Svidler got a large positional advantage; although he took his time to cash the full point, he was always in control.

"I think a reasonably nice game, but I was obviously helped greatly by the choice of going 14.Qd1. This is never the right choice," he said.

The absolute top clash of the round between Abdusattorov and Arjun ended up being the least interesting. The main takeaway from this game is that Abdusattorov again looked somewhat shaky (24...c5! would have been great for Arjun) and clearly needs to warm up a little. On Monday he plays Svidler, who said: "Having not started particularly well, I’m pretty sure he wants to get back on track, and I present a nice, juicy target."

The Tepe Sigeman Chess Tournament takes place April 27-May 3, 2024, at the Elite Plaza Hotel in Malmo, Sweden. The players compete in an eight-player single round-robin. The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, with 30 more minutes for the rest of the game and a 30-second increment per move.

Previous coverage:

• Korobov Upsets Abdusattorov As TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament Gets Underway