The Hindu : Bareev draws level, Leko stays ahead

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 16, 2002

Sport

Sport - Chess

Bareev draws level, Leko stays ahead

DORTMUND JULY 15. Evgeny Bareev of Russia bounced back from his opening loss against Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, winning the second game of their semifinal match in the Candidates' tournament on Sunday.

With two games to go, the result left their match tied 1-1. In the other match, Hungary's Peter Leko drew against Alexei Shirov of Spain in their second game and leads 1.5-0.5.

Bareev played the Caro-Kann Defence and, on move 15, varied from his game against Englishman Michael Adams in the preliminary round of this event. The position was even and a draw might have been expected in short order. But Bareev opened the b-file, on which Shirov's king was standing, and kept probing. On move 35, his queen broke into Topalov's position and won a pawn.

Although the open position and Topalov's passed pawn on c5 gave Bareev technical difficulties in converting the win, Bareev was up to the task and was clearly winning when Topalov blundered on move 57. Faced with a checkmate or ruinous loss of material, Topalov resigned.

In the other semifinal, Leko — the winner of Saturday's first game — chose the relatively quiet 6.Be2 line against Shirov's Najdorf Sicilian. Shirov's 15th move was a novelty, which involved a temporary pawn sacrifice.

After a series of exchanges, an endgame with opposite-colour bishops and both sets of rooks on the board arose. White had a better pawn structure but no real advantage. The players agreed to split the point on move 29.

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