Chess - The Scotsman 17/02/2012

POLISH champion GM Mateusz Bartel recorded the biggest victory of his career by winning the Aeroflot Open title in Moscow on Wednesday. Bartel, 26, scored 6.5/9 to finish in a three-way tie with Pavel Eljanov and Anton Korobov, but he took the title and the £20,000 top prize by virtue of having the better tiebreak scores.

The shock victory also gives Bartel a ticket into his first super-grandmaster tournament, as along with the title there comes a bonus prize of an invitation to play in the Dortmund Sparkassen tournament in Germany this summer.

A key game that proved crucial for Bartel’s tiebreak score was his round 7 miniature over rising star Fabiano Caruana, of Italy. In today’s diagram, Black can’t play 20 ..Kg8 as 21 Bxc6! bxc6 22 Rxc6 Qb7 23 Rxb6 Qxf3 24 gxf3 also wins easily. And that loss proved costly in more ways the one for Caruana, as with it not only went his chances of winning the tournament but also replacing Hikaru Nakamura as world No 6 in the next rating list, though he will appear in seventh, just ahead of Sergey Karjakin.

The Aeroflot Open has acquired the same cult status that Lone Pine, California, gained in the 1970s, but this could well have been the last tournament as there are rumours that Aeroflot’s management, facing tough economic times, may be set to axe its sponsorship after 11 years.

Final standings: 1-3. M Bartel (Poland), A Korobov and P Eljanov (both Ukrain), 6.5/9; 4-8. A Khalifman (Russia), M Rodshtein (Israel), F Caruana (Italy), H Melkumyan (Armenia) and D Andrekin (Russia), 6; 9-10. K Sasikiran (India) and Bu Xiangzhi (China), 5.5.

M Bartel - F Caruana

11th Aeroflot Open A, (7)

Slav Defence

1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nf3 Nf6 4 e3 Bg4 5 Nc3 e6 6 h3 Bh5 7 Qb3 Qc7 8 Nh4 Nbd7 9 Bd2 Nb6 10 cxd5 exd5 11 Rc1 Bg6 12 Nxg6 hxg6 13 Bd3 Be7 14 0–0 Kf8 15 a4 a5 16 e4 dxe4 17 Nxe4 Rh5 18 Rfe1 Nxe4 19 Bxe4 Bd6 20 Qf3! Nxa4 21 Bxg6 Rh8 22 Bg5 1–0