18/12/2017 Artemiev Scores At Mind Games, 2nd Behind Carlsen In Blitz - Chess.

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Vladislav Artemiev won the blitz at the Mind Games. | Photo:Gu Xiaobing/IMSA Elite Mind Games.

Artemiev Scores At Mind Games, 2nd Behind Carlsen In Blitz

PeterDoggers
16 dic. 2017 13:26 | c 15 | Cobertura de eventos de ajedrez

GM Vladislav Artemiev jumped to second place in the blitz world rankings after winning 79.2 Elo points at the IMSA Elite Mind Games in China.
Alexander Grischuk won no less than 127.2 points.

Thesecond IMSA Elite Mind Games championship took place 8-16 December in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, China. It was organized bythe Board and Card
Games Administrative Center of the General Administration of Sport, together with the Municipality of Huaian.

The competition included games such as draughts, go and bridge, but this report obviously focusses on the game played on 64 squares with 32 pieces!

12 male and 12 female players participated in three different tournaments: rapid (two days, 20 minutes plus 10 seconds), blitz (two days, 22 rounds, 3
minutes plus 2 seconds) and basque (two days, five-round Swisses, 20 minutes plus 10 seconds,two games simultaneously against the same player). Each
event had a prize fund of 50,000/$58,780 (men) and 33,000/$38,795 (women).

An opening ceremony in China is spectacularly beautiful, guaranteed. | Photo:Gu Xiaobing/IMSA Elite Mind Games.

The male participants were Vladislav Artemiev (Russia), Le Quang Liem (Vietnam), Yu Yangyi (China), Ding Liren (China), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
(Azerbaijan), Wang Hao (China), Alexander Grischuk (Russia), Dmitry Andreikin (Russia), Rauf Mamedov (Azerbaijan), Anton Korobov (Ukraine), Vassily
Ivanchuk (Ukraine) and Pentala Harikrishna (India).

The female players were Nana Dzagnidze (Georgia), Harika Dronavalli (India), Anna Muzychuk (Ukraine), Mariya Muzychuk (Ukraine), Ju Wenjun (China),
Zhao Xue (China), Anna Ushenina (Ukraine), Alexandra Kosteniuk (Russia), Elisabeth Paehtz (Germany, Antoaneta Stefanova (Bulgaria), Tan Zhongyi
(China) and Kateryna Lagno (Russia).

Mamedyarov vs Ding in the basque, always an interesting variant. | Photo:Gu Xiaobing/IMSA Elite Mind Games.

The winners were Andreikin and Stefanova for the rapid, Artemiev and again Stefanova for the blitz and Grischuk and Zhao Xue for the basque.

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An interesting side story were the rating developments for especially the blitz. Both Artemiev and Grischuk finished on 16 points out of 22 games, and
gained a bucket load of rating points.

2017IMSA Elite Mind Games | Blitz Final Standings

Rk SNo Fed Name Rtg Pts TB1 TB2 TB3

1 10 Artemiev, Vladislav 2798 16 2 167 13

2 6 Grischuk, Alexander 2725 16 0 157.5 14

3 3 Andreikin, Dmitry 2771 14 0 150 10

4 2 Yu Yangyi 2701 12 0 119.5 9

5 7 Ivanchuk, Vassily 2815 11 1 112 9

6 4 Ding Liren 2837 11 1 106 7

7 12 Le, Quang Liem 2771 10 3 95.5 7

8 5 Wang Hao 2737 10 2 102.5 6

9 11 Harikrishna, Pentala 2759 10 1 107 6

10 1 Mamedov, Rauf 2755 8 0 77 5

11 8 Korobov, Anton 2760 7 2 79.5 5

12 9 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar 2770 7 0 74.5 3

Vladislav Artemiev showed himself to be a blitz monster in China. | Photo:Gu Xiaobing/IMSA Elite Mind Games.

Artemiev gained 79.2 Elo points and with that, the19-year-old Russian GM moved up from #13 to #2 in the world blitz rankings. Grischuk, who had lost
76 points in his match with Fabiano Caruana at the Champions Showdown in St. Louis, won them all back and more. His +127.2 points got him back into
the world's top 10. Andreikin is there too, winning 56.8 points.

Live ratings per 16 December. | Image courtesy 2700chess.com.

With such huge swings, not everyone will take the blitz ratings very serious just yet. It doesn't help either that we can still see the name of Iuri Shkuro in
the world's top 10, about whom we wrote for the first time in the summer of 2016:

As it turns out, the events where Mr. Shkuro won his points have a lot of similarities. They were all held in Ukraine, and each time he played against
(much) lower rated opponents. He gained points by getting a huge score, while possessing a K factor of 20.

Top grandmasters are making jokes about him (what else can they do?). For instance, during the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz one super GM, known for his
trash talk skills, said he had "reached his life goal" by getting ahead of Shkuro in the list.

Here's a game by Artemiev where he beats Grischuk in just 26 moves:

Grischuk, Alexander (2772) vs. Artemiev, Vladislav (2691)

2nd IMSA Blitz 2017 | Huai'an CHN | Round 15.3 | 13 Dec 2017 | ECO: B46 | 0-1
8
1.e4 c5 2.Cf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Cxd4 Cc6 5.Cc3 a6 6.Ae3 Cf6 7.a3 d5 8.exd5 exd5 9.Ae2 Ad6 10.O-O
O-O 11.Af3 Ac7 12.Te1 Te8 13.Dd2 Ag4 14.Axg4 Cxg4 15.g3 Cge5 16.Rg2 Cc4 17.Dc1 Cxe3+
7
18.fxe3 Ce5 19.Cf3 Cxf3 20.Rxf3 Df6+ 21.Rg2 Dc6 22.Rg1 Ab6 23.Dd2 Txe3 24.Txe3 d4 25.Dg2
dxc3 26.Dxc6 Axe3+
6

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a b c d e f g h

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Download Tournament PGN

Games via TWIC.

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