Sunday, October 31, 2010 at 2:06PM
In a match that set chess, or at least opening theory, back 150 years, Ivanchuk and Nakamura played a couple of King's Gambits in their final match at Cap D'Agde. Nakamura forgot the rule that says the older player is always the favorite in a King's Gambit, and that's how it turned out today.
In game 1, with Ivanchuk White, the game went 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Nc6 3.Nf3 f5, but rather than go for the main line with 4.exf5 he chose the very safe 4.d3. Soon the players positions were symmetrical, and a pretty dull draw looked likely. Nakamura made some inaccuracies, though, and they reached an ending with a bishop and knight each, and although the pawn structures weren't almost exactly symmetrical Ivanchuk stood better, as the pawns were almost all fixed on the color of Black's bishop. The final error was Nakamura's offer to trade knights, which resulted in a dead lost position - so lost that he resigned when Ivanchuk took his knight. It's not clear what Nakamura missed, but he missed something!
After a short break, game 2 began and this time Nakamura played the King's Gambit! Unless this was his original intention it seemed like a dubious decision. Ivanchuk is a big theoretical expert on practically everything anyway, but since he himself played it in game 1 it's very likely he had recently reviewed the theory. Nakamura quickly got into trouble in this game too, but since a draw clinched the match Ivanchuk was content to force a perpetual before move 20.
So Ivanchuk won, avenging his loss to Nakamura in the 2008 Cap D'Agde tournament, and continues to show - along with Anand and Gelfand - that a chess player can still perform at the highest level even after turning 40. Congrats!
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