Aronian is 2017 World Cup champion
GM Levon Aronian of Armenia won both active (25 minutes + 10 seconds’ increment) tiebreak games to beat China’s Ding Liren 4.0-2.0 and claim for himself the title of FIDE World Cup 2017 Champion.
Aronian becomes the first two-time winner of the World Cup — if you will recall he also won the inaugural World Cup 12 years ago in 2005. That was his first great surge, from world no. 21 (rating of 2684) in the January 2005 rating list he steadily went up to the top 5 and on the March 2014 list was ranked no. 2 in the world with an ELO rating of 2830, the fourth highest rated player in history. For a while it looked like he was on course to topple Magnus Carlsen for no. 1 in the list but Aronian went through a few failures and fell to 2770 a year later, still a very high rating but definitely not reflective of his talent and class as a chessplayer.
In 2017 Aronian finally bounced back and is having one of the best years of his career — he won the super powerful Grenke Chess Classic in April, the category 22 Altibox Norway Stavanger tournament in June (all of the players in the world top 10 were present — there have only been 23 category 22 tournaments in history!) and the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz events in August.
At the end of September 2017 Aronian married WIM Arianne Caoili, formerly the Philippines’ board 1 player in the 2000 Istanbul Olympiad. Aronian has become an honorary Filipino!
Two more names have now been finalized for the 8-player Berlin Candidates’ Tournament in March 2018. Based on Martin Bennedick’s Web site these are:
Sergey Karjakin, the runner- up of the 2016 world championship match;
Levon Aronian, winner 2017 World Cup
Ding Liren, losing finalist, 2017 World Cup
The following slots have not yet been finalized:
Two qualifiers from the 2017 Grand Prix. The front-runners are Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexander Grischuk. There is one last leg scheduled in Palma de Mallorca, Spain in November. The qualifiers will be finalized after that tournament. Teimour Radjabov and Maxime Vachier- Lagrave still have chances.
The top 2 in rating ( average over the 12 months of 2017) not already qualified according to the criteria above. The front- runners are Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So. Only Kramnik has a chance to catch them.
Organizer’s nominee who must be rated at least 2725 in any 2017 rating list. Take note that the organizer for the candidates is Germany but it has no players rated 2725 — highest is Liviu- Dieter Nisipeanu who is 2674, so it is anybody’s guess who they will nominate.
Time to look at the two tie- break games.
*** Aronian, Levon (2802) — Ding, Liren (2771) [D43] FIDE World Cup 2017 Tbilisi (7.5), 27.09.2017 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Nc3 d5 4.d4 c6 5.Bg5 h6 The Moscow Variation. No surprise here as Ding Liren often plays it.
6.Bxf6 Qxf6 7.Qb3
Neither is this a surprise. In particular, Aronian used this move to defeat Peter Leko in Armenia’s high- profile encounter with Hungary in the 2014 Tromso Olympiad. 7... Nd7 8. e4 dxe4 9. Nxe4 Qf4 10.Bd3 e5
The Aronian-Leko game continued 10...Be7 11.Bc2!? 0–0 (Do you see the point behind Aronian’s 11th move? If now 11... e5? 12. g3! Black’s e5 pawn is
lost. Take note that White’s queen is now defending the f3–knight) 12.0–0 Rd8 13.Rad1 b6 14.Rfe1 White’s position is definitely easier to play. Aronian,L ( 2805)- Leko, P ( 2740) Tromso Olympiad 2014 1–0 (50). 11.0–0 Be7 12.Rae1!?
A theoretical novelty. In 90% of the time when this position occurred in tournament praxis White had played 12.Rfe1. The idea behind using the a1– rook is shown in the very next move — White can play Bb1 without blocking out his own rook. 12...exd4 13.Bb1 0–0 14.Ng3 Bd8
One of those mysterious moves. Ding wanted to play 14...Bd6 but as pointed out by IM Sagar Shah in the chessbase site it has a brilliant refutation: 15.Qd3! g6 16.Re6!! and now the only move 16... Nf6 is met by 17.Ne2 and Black has to give up his queen. With ... Bd8 Ding keeps an eye on the f6–square while at the same time trying to move over his bishop to c7 at the opportune time. 15.Qd3 g6
[15...Nf6? 16.Nh5!] 16.h4 Nf6 17.h5
Up to here Aronian was still blitzing out his moves while Ding was playing very thoughtfully. 17...g5 <D>
POSITION AFTER 17...G5
Now we come to the decisive phase of the game. 18.Ne5!
Threatening Ng6! The 3 minutes Aronian spent on this move was his first “long” think, While Ding had only around 12 minutes left for the rest of the game.
18...Ba5
Aronian missed the point of this move, which is to enable ... Qd2 and try to exchange queens. This threat of course is easily met by 19.Re2, which is what GM Levon should have played. 19.Ng6?! Qd2!
To this move Aronian had a surprising reaction — he left the board and went to the toilet. It turned out that on the previous move he had been distracted by some loud construction noise which made him miss Ding’s brilliant defensive maneuver. His own words after the game: “The first game was kind of not so difficult until the moment when the construction noise started and then I lost my concentration. I managed to catch my opponent in preparation and then I lost my concentration and allowed some unnecessary things because of the noise, and then I went to the bathroom, just washed my face, just relaxed and I think I played a decent game later on.” 20.Ne7+ Kg7 21.Qb3!
Of course White does not want to exchange queens.
21...Qf4 22.Rd1 Bb6 23.Ngf5+ Bxf5 24.Nxf5+ Kh8 25.g3! Qg4 26.Nxh6 Qxh5?
For better or worse he had to play 26...Qe6. The text allows the powerful Kg2 and Rh1. 27.Kg2!
The end is near. 27...d3
Another sneaky defense, but one which Aronian catches. 28.Qc3!
The point of Ding’s defense is that 28.Rh1 Qe2! 29.Nf5+ Kg8 and the attack on f2 forces White to take a perpetual check and draw. 28...Kg7 29.Nf5+ Kg6 30.Rh1 1–0
Ding resigns as 30.Rh1 Qe2 31.Rh6+ Kxf5 32.Bxd3+ is curtains.
Having lost the first tie-break game Ding has no choice but to go for a win in the second.
*** Ding, Liren (2771) — Aronian, Levon (2802) [D38] FIDE World Cup 2017 Tbilisi (7.6), 27.09.2017 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3
Bb4 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bf4 c6 7.e3 Bf5 8.Be2 0–0 9.0–0 Be7
A new move, nothing spectacular, but it had its desired effect — Ding is completely out of his preparation.
10.Nh4 Bg6 11.Nxg6 hxg6 12.Qb3 Qb6 13.Qc2 a5 14.g4 Nbd7 15.g5 Ne8 16.e4 dxe4?!
An inexactitude, and I will show you in a while why it is so. Black shold have started regrouping with 16...Qd8. 17.Nxe4
Black intended to follow through with the maneuver ... Ne8– c7– e6, but now realized that 17... Nc7 18. Nc5! is very bad for him. He loses a piece with 18...Nxc5 19.dxc5 Bxc5 20.Bxc7. Aronian goes into a bit of panic mode here. 17... Qd8 18. h4 Nb6 19. Be5 Nd5 20.Bg4 Kh8 21.Rae1 Nef6!?
Ingenuity born of desperation. Aronian commented after the game that “I realized that my 21...Nef6 move loses, because he has Qd2 in many cases, but otherwise I’m just going to die slowly, so practically this was a good decision and it managed to confuse my opponent, I think.” 22.gxf6 gxf6 23.Bh2?
This is really an OUCH moment. With 23.Bg3! Ding could have won. What is the difference? I will show you later. 23...f5 24.Bxf5 gxf5 25.Qd1 Rg8+!
The ...Rf8–g8+–g4 maneuver turns the game around. If Ding’s bishop had been on g3 instead of h2 it would not work as …Rg8 would not be with check. 26.Kh1 Rg4! 27.Ng3 Rxh4 28.Nxf5 Rh7 29.Nxe7 Nxe7 30.Re5
Intending Rh5.
30...Nf5!
A nice trick. 31.Rxf5 is met by 31... Qh4 and White can only prevent mate by giving up his rook and queen. 31.Rfe1?
I suspect that Ding saw that 31.Qg4 is the only move but after 31... Qh4 32.Qxh4 Nxh4 the life has been sucked out of the game and White has to defend a dreary endgame and if he is lucky perhaps he can draw. 31...Qh4 32.Re8+ Kg7 33.Rg1+ Kf6 0–1
And now the predominantly Armenian crowd stood up and gave Aronian a standing ovation. Well deserved.