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  <title><![CDATA[World Chess Cup 2011: Survival of the fittest]]></title>
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    <article id="18540">
      <title><![CDATA[World Chess Cup 2011: Survival of the fittest]]></title>
      <author><![CDATA[Chess Network Staff]]></author>
      <attribution source="The Star"><![CDATA[http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2011/10/7/lifeliving/9633422&sec=lifeliving]]></attribution>
      <createdate unixtime="1329900623" delta="12 hours ago"><![CDATA[2/22/2012]]></createdate>
      <image><![CDATA[gwa600168.jpg]]></image>
      <lead><![CDATA[THE recent World Chess Cup tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, easily qualified as one of the longest chess tournaments this year.]]></lead>
      <text><![CDATA[When the schedule was announced earlier this year, I felt a bit dizzy just thinking about a tournament that would span 24 days, from Aug 28 to Sept 20.Do not think that chess is a game of ease and leisure, that all a player does is to sit down at the chessboard and exercise his brain cells, and move his arm muscles. No, playing chess requires one to be fit mentally and physically.Just ask any of the good chess players, even our local ones, and they will tell you that they do require a measure of physical fitness.It may not mean much when one plays in one-day chess events, but when you have a tournament that spans anything from five to eight days, physical strain can set in.As for the World Chess Cup, anyone taking part in this event must be super-fit to survive the course of 24 days.Of course, Im referring to those who progressed through this knock-out event from Round One right until the final Round Seven  and there were only four of them. The rest were eliminated along the way.When the World Chess Cup kicked off in late August, there were 128 players from around the world. Many had qualified from the World Chess Federations zonal tournaments or the continental chess championships that were organised some time earlier. Some had qualified by virtue of their international ratings or their positions as finalists in the last World Chess Cup or womens world champion or world junior champions.In any case, this event began as a huge potpourri of chess players of all race and creed, old and young, the very strong and the not-so-strong. The regulations were simple. In each of the first six rounds, the paired players would play two games at normal regulation time control and if the results were tied, they would proceed to play two games at rapidchess time control followed by blitz games, if necessary. For the final round, there would be four normal regulation games instead of two, followed by the play-off games.So the field was halved to 64 players at the end of Round One, down to 32 players after Round Two, and further reduced to 16 players by the end of Round Three. The players were: Lazaro Bruzon, Leinier Dominguez, Vugar Gashimov, Alexander Grischuk, Vassily Ivanchuk, Dmitry Jakovenko, Gata Kamsky, David Navara, Peter Heine Nielsen, Judit Polgar, Ruslan Ponomariov, Vladimir Potkin, Teimour Radjabov, Peter Svidler, Bu Xiangzhi and Yaroslav Zherebukh.By then, the real contest in the World Chess Cup had started. The players were seriously eyeing the three qualification spots for the World Chess Federations Candidates stage of the 2013 World Chess Championship.The fourth round saw the field whittled down to eight when Bruzon, Dominguez, Jakovenko, Kamsky, Nielsen, Potkin, Bu and Zherebukh were eliminated.The firm favourites to progress further in the competition were Svidler, Ponomariov, Ivanchuk and Grischuk, and they did this by beating Polgar, Gashimov, Radjabov and Navara respectively in the fifth round or the quarter-finals round.The sixth round or the semi-finals saw Svidler paired against Ponomariov, and Ivanchuk paired against Grischuk. These were very tense contests because the winners would qualify for the Candidates stage regardless of how they played in the seventh round. The losers would have to fight it out for the last remaining place and the pressure on them would be great.Svidler was the first to qualify after disposing of Ponomariov in two games. Grischuk took longer, having to beat Ivanchuk in six games. The highlight of this round was Ivanchuks shock blunder in the third play-off game.Grischuk, who was in his customary time trouble, had allowed his clock to run down to the last three seconds before he executed his move. Ivanchuk thought that he was almost on the verge of winning and walked right into the trap that his opponent had laid for him. He lost a knight, followed by a rook, all in two consecutive moves.When Grischuk captured the rook, Ivanchuk was so distressed that he resigned the game immediately and left the table with his face buried in his hands. This was clearly a man in great shock.When the seventh or final round arrived, there was no big drama. Instead, it was like an anti-climax. Svidler wrapped up the World Chess Cup by winning the first game, giving Grischuk no chance of equalising the match. The fight for third and fourth places was more intense but Ivanchuk had by then recovered sufficiently to beat Ponomariov and secure the last qualifying position.]]></text>
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