The world number nine player thinks 62 minutes per move
Romania39-year-old player Levon Aronian took 62 minutes to make a move in the third game of the world Alireza Firouzja, at Superbet Chess Classic on May 7.
In the third round of the first tournament of the Grand Chess Tour 2022 system, Aronian led the white army to meet French naturalized Iranian player Firouzja. The Armenian-American player made a mistake after the opening and decided not to enter the castle. After 20 moves, the 18-year-old player uses the black post to catch the white pawn a4, accepting to change the queen. Then Firouzja had 63 minutes, while Aronian had 74 minutes to think.
The position after 20…Qxa4. Aronian took the white piece, it took more than 62 minutes to accept the change with 21.Qxa4.
After changing the rear, White lost more b pawns, and Black had up to three pawns on the backside. Firouzja has a big advantage with these three dangerous pawns. At that time, Aronian only had 12 minutes to make the next 20 moves, not counting the extra 30 seconds after each move. According to the tournament rules, each player has 90 minutes to complete the first 40 moves, an additional 30 seconds after each move. From move 41, each player has an additional 30 minutes.
Although there was only an average of about a minute for a next move, Aronian still managed to hold out in a losing position. He extended the game to the end and was given an additional 30 minutes of thinking. After the 40th move, Aronian still has a symbol, and both sides have four pawns. But the black pawns are pushed higher and also much more dangerous.
At move 41, Firouzja took 12 minutes to make a move, but it was the turning point mistake. From there Aronian changed his horse, and pushed the king’s wing to the queen at the same time as Firouzja. The chess game ended with the beautiful runner-up of the world number nine player, to put in a stalemate position, meaning the result was a draw.
Aronian entered b2 well on move 62. After the black queen caught the white queen, the game was drawn because White had no more valid moves.
Aronian is a former world number two, with a career-high Elo of 2,830. He is the fourth highest Elo player in history, after Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov and Fabiano Caruana. He has a tactical style, with top creativity in both the opening and the middle.
Despite spending more than 62 minutes on a move, Aronian still has not broken the record for the longest thinking time of a top chess player. The record belongs to Alexander Grischuk at Candidates on April 21, 2021, in the game Wang Hao (Vuong Hao). At that time, the former world number two Grischuk spend 72 minutes to move to the 11th move. This Russian player is famous for his ability to allocate time inappropriately in the opening.
Superbet Chess Classic is a standard chess tournament that brings together 10 invited players, with a prize fund of 350,000 USD, of which 100,000 USD is for the champion. The 10 players participating in this year’s tournament include Firouzja, Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Richard Rapport, Aronian, Wesley So, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Leinier Dominguez and host Bogdan-Daniel Deac. In which, the top nine players ranked in the Top 15 in the world. After three rounds, Nepomniachtchi, So and Deac shared the lead with two points. Aronian was in the group with 1.5 points and Firouzja got only one point.
Aronian in the Firouzja match in Bucharest, Romania on May 7. Image: GCT
Grand Chess Tour is a super prize system with a prize fund of 1.4 million USD, including five stages of board games. Vietnam’s number one player Le Quang Liem has attended the stages of this Tour three times, all in lightning tournaments. He had never played a standard chess tournament there.
Xuan Binh
at Blogtuan.info – Source: vnexpress.net – Read the original article here
