HISTORY
AN EXCITING CONFRONTATION!
CONFRONTATION!
LEKO HAS WON THE MATCH !
For his last opportunity with White, Khalifman tries an aggressive variation which avoids the main lines of the Grunfeld. It is a difficult line that we were expecting from the beginning of the match. Peter plays the opening in a new way and comes level quickly.
Leko gets the top prize money while Khalifman will get half as much. German company Westfaelische Ferngas-AG (WFG) sponsored the event.
Toast! Leko was favored to win the match over the World Champion, but nobody expected it to be this easy.
Khalifman,A (2653) - Leko,P (2725) [D70] Budapest match (5), 08.01.2000 [GM Amador Rodriguez]
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.f3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.e4 Nb6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.Be3 e5!? An unexpected novelty that caught Khalifman unaware. Known continuations are 7...0-0 and 7...Cc6 8.d5 c6 9.Qd2 cxd5 Here Khalifman started thinking for quite a long time. 10.Bb5+ [The principal alternative is 10.exd5 and after 10...Nc4 11.Bxc4 Qh4+ Black achieves the bishop pair. If this is good or bad I don’t know, but it is definitely this line that Khalifman want’s to avoid with the check on b5.] 10...Bd7 11.Bxb6 Qxb6 12.Bxd7+ Nxd7 13.Nxd5 Qd6 14.Ne2 h5!
Leko was very proud of this move, bringing his bishop to a much more active diagonal, and immediately creating counterchances. 15.Qb4?! A difficult move to understand. White’s strong knight on d5 is very effective in the middle game, but in the ending Black’s bishop comes back to life, and becomes a very strong minor piece. 15...Qxb4+ 16.Nxb4 Bh6 17.Nd5 0-0 18.Nec3 Nc5 19.Rd1 Kg7 20.h4 Ne6 Black plays very carefully, and has put his pieces on the best squares possible. 21.Kf2 Rfd8 22.g4!? f6 23.gxh5 gxh5 24.Ne7 White gains access to the f5 square, and now Black must be careful: two knights on f5 and d5 are something to be afraid of! 24...Kf7 25.Nf5 Bf8! An important decision: the bishop goes to a better square to bemore effective. 26.Nd5 Rac8 27.Rc1 Bc5+ 28.Ke2 Nd4+ 29.Nxd4 Bxd4 The knight exchange has clarified the position, and now it is clear that White cannot win. A lot of people in the playing room thought that Black was better now, although after the game Peter told me that he didn’t think that he had any real winning chances. 30.Kd3 Rg8 31.Rxc8 Rxc8 32.f4 Rg8 33.f5 Rg3+ 34.Ke2 Rg2+ 35.Kf3 Rf2+ 36.Kg3 Rxb2 37.Rc1 Bf2+ 38.Kh3 Bb6 39.Rc8 Re2 40.Rb8 Rxe4 41.Rxb7+ Kf8 42.Nxf6 Re3+ 43.Kg2 Here a draw was agreed. A draw means a victory for Leko in the match, having achieved 3.5 points, which Khalifman cannot reach. 1/2-1/2
From Budapest, Grandmaster Amador Rodriguez (English Translation: IM Michael Rahal)
Leko is regarded as the hardest player to beat. Khalifman gave him everything he's got and failed.
GAME 5: KHALIFMAN - LEKO 1/2 ANNOTATIONS BY IM ANGEL MARTIN
In spite of having the white pieces, Khalifman failed to bring the game to paths where in principal he is superior to Leko, and he hasn't acheived any advantage from the opening.
The Russian player opened the game with 1.d4. Nearly everyone expected 1.e4, the move against which Leko had suffered his only three losses with Black in 1999 (against Adams, Svidler and Movsesian). Khalifman also plays in this way often, but probably he has not prepared the move for this event.
Khalifman today played a different move against Leko's Grunfeld Defence, choosing 3.f3. Perhaps he had prepared something against 3…e5 a rare and probably dubious gambit played by Leko against Kramnik in Tilburg 1998. That game was won by the Hungarian player, buy probably Khalifman had found the way to improve White's play.
But Leko refused to repeat this gambit, and played the usual 3…d5, and the game soon strayed away from normal paths with a lot of simplifications. Khalifman acheived a minimal advantage in a symmetrical structure, although it was very difficult to exploit it, specially against Leko who, at the moment, has proved to be stronger in the technical phase of the game. The Hungarian quickly reached a completely safe position.
The draw in this game was equivalent to a loss for Khalifman, and probably without much morale left, he couldn'0t find anything positive, and his position quickly deteriorated. Soon Leko had such a good position that he could think of winning. In spite of having safe ways to draw, the Hungarian played actively and won a pawn, giving Khalifman some counterplay, but only enough to hope for a draw.
Probably, if Leko had needed to win this game, he would have been able to , but a draw was enough to win the match, and he considered it a good result. He allowed his opponent to enter a line, where if he refused the move repetition, he would only lose the game. So Khalifman had to accept a draw. Tomorrow the last game will be played. I don’t think Khalifman can show anything, and we will only see if Leko wants to make him suffer, or the game will be just a formality.
IM Angel Martin
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