• Submitted by: admin
• Sports
• 06 / 16 / 2010

Any list of the greatest players of all time always includes José Raúl Capablanca, the third world champion.

During his heyday, he was considered almost invincible (one of his nicknames was “the chess machine,” long before computers proved to be better than people) and he lost only one game in a 10-year period.

Since 1962, a memorial tournament in his honor has been held almost annually in his homeland. (That is not surprising as Fidel Castro and Ché Guevera were both fans of the game.) This year is the 45th edition and it started June 10.

The tournament is in three parts: An elite double round-robin (where each competitor plays all the others twice); a premier round-robin (one game against each of the players), which also has some strong grandmasters; and an open section.

After five rounds, Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, who won the tournament in 2005, 2006 and 2007, is leading the top section with 4 points. Nigel Short of Britain, is in second with 3 points, while Leinier Dominguez Perez of Cuba, the 2008 and 2009 champion, has 2.5 points.

Ivanchuk got off to a great start, beating Short and Evgeny Alekseev of Russia. After draws in Rounds 3 and 4, he beat Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia in Round 5. Nepomniachtchi, who had White, had problems right out of the opening.

He played the Fantasy Variation against the Caro-Kann Defense and pushed a lot of pawns instead of developing his pieces. He ended up in a difficult endgame in which he had few good moves. Ivanchuk carefully encircled him, choking off any possible counterplay and picking off White’s pawns. Nepomniachtchi conceded in a hopeless position.

Short also produced a nice victory in Round 5 over Lazaro Bruzon Batista of Cuba. Bruzon, who had White, chose an odd system against the French Defense.

Each player wound up with a pawn majority on one side of the board — Bruzon had four pawns to two on the queen side, Short had four to two on the king side.

By DYLAN MCCLAIN

Source: gambit.blogs.nytimes.com