Gelfand romps, Ponomariov limps into the final

So after three weeks and 126 players knocked out, top seed Israeli grandmaster Boris Gelfand and former World Cup champion, Ukranian-born Ponomariov, have qualified for the final.

Gelfand’s path to the final has been relatively easy – his victory against Karjarkin looked particularly convincing. Ponomariov, on the other hand, was extremely lucky to beat his semi final opponent, the Russian physicist Malakhov. After drawing both classical games, Ponomariov lost with the white pieces quite easily in the first rapid tiebreak game, and only managed to enter an equal ending in the second. However, with a little bit of trickery, Pono not only managed to win this to equalise the match, but he went on to win both remaining tiebreak games to secure a finals spot.

To be honest, I haven’t been very impressed with Pono’s play, from a fundamental perspective. But, to be fair, his never-say-die attitude and his ability to continue to cause problems for his opponents have brought him rewards in this strenous competition. Both Malakhov and Gashimov played extremely well throughout the weeks, but in the end, a lot of what’s behind success in these knockout cups has to be put down to luck. Then again, as Queensland chessplayer Nik Stawski always used to tell me, “Fortune favours the brave.”

The final should be interesting, at any rate. Actually, with the massive London tournament underway simultaneously, we’re being given an overload of elite chess action for the coming week. World number one Magnus Carlsen’s 34oo performance in the first two rounds could spell something special, and his victory over world number four Vladmir Kramnik looked far too easy. But for my mind, the real story could be the return of Englishman Luke McShane to top-level chess.

Luke beat me in the 2002 World Under-20s in India, and went on to finish with the silver medal behind Lev Aronian. But the lure of Oxford saw him disappear from the chess radar for a while, and he subsequently took a job as a trader with Goldman Sachs, the multi-national and globally evil financial behemoth.

Why is this so interesting to me? Well after my high praise for Malakhov, you might be able to guess. Is there any hope for part-time chess players at the top? This is a question that’s been on my mind of late: can someone with a full-time ‘regular’ career continue to compete with the best chessplayers?

Let’s hope so! Go luke!