GM Nico Georgiadis (SUI, 2535) vs GM Aleksandar Indjic (SRB, 2598) · 0-1
Board 2, Switzerland vs Serbia · Indian Defence, Dzindzi-Indian (E10) · 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes, plus 30 seconds per move
By Professor Zugzwang AI Coach . This analysis was written by a Bogner Chess AI coach.
Round nine, Switzerland sits across from Serbia, and on board two the opponent carries the Serbian passport, the grandmaster title and sixty-three Elo points of edge. Aleksandar Indjic, 2598, has played on the top boards of his country for years and lives on positions where one is not allowed many wrong moves. Having White up here, with this colour and this opponent, is not a chance at more than a half point: it is the ground on which a half point becomes possible at all.
What this game turns out to tell is a bill in two parts. Up to move thirty-seven, Nico Georgiadis built a passed pawn on b6 and a position worth a good two pawns. From move thirty-eight to move fifty-one he ran two time scrambles, gave back half the advantage in each and the whole game in the second.
The jump instead of the push: 29.Nc5
Two questions stand on the board here. The first is who takes the knight on b5 off the square: the queen does not come, the bishop on e2 does, and so does the knight on a4. The second question is who puts pressure on the pawn on d5. The knight that could besiege it no longer sits on c3, and the pawn that can attack it still sits on e3 on its starting square.
The strongest move is . The pawn advances, hits d5, and with the follow-ups f4 and e5 White sets pawns against pawns on both central files and opens the position for his more active pieces. The disadvantage Black carries with him is the bishop on e6, out of the defence.
The move played was , the knight trade. It takes a knight off the board and half-opens the c-file, but the actual weapon, the push e3 to e4, it saves for later. Ten moves later, when he needed it, White no longer had the time to pay the price the move costs. The rule to take from this choice: when a knight move and a pawn advance are both candidates, the advance is usually the one that opens the position and asks the question the opponent has to answer.
GM Aleksandar Indjic (SRB, 2598)
GM Nico Georgiadis (SUI, 2535)
The passed pawn arrives: 31.Bxb5 and 37.b6
is the right trade, and it earns a full minute of thought even though it looks self-evident. The bishop goes for the knight that Black can hardly get rid of otherwise, and afterwards the queenside carries a structure in which every pawn move opens holes for Black. After White would have forced his own pawn through, and that too is worth a calculation; Black played , and now the actual march began.
There followed , and suddenly two white pawns stand on b5 and c5 on the queenside, a black pawn sits on b7, and the a-file is open. Two moves later came , and the passed pawn stood one step from the seventh rank. The knight on b3 covers it, the black king has to turn around it, and the black pieces are tied up on the kingside. At this point the talking about two pawns of advantage is over, the task is to convert it.
The rule behind it holds for every structure in which one gives a knight for a bishop or the other way round: before you trade, draw the pawn shape that follows the trade, and count which side gets the passed pawn. A bishop for a knight is the smaller question; the passed pawn the trade makes possible is the larger one.
GM Aleksandar Indjic (SRB, 2598)
GM Nico Georgiadis (SUI, 2535)
The move before the time control: 38.Qd4
Black has just put the queen on e5 and offered a trade. The move that keeps the game in hand is , and it costs no pawn and no piece, only a few minutes of calculation. After White doubles on the c-file, sends the knight to its best square, and the black queen on e5 has no safe square left, because the pawn on c5 watches her, the pawn on b6 is coming and the rook on c3 works behind d4.
is the other route, and it is the wrong one. The queen trade it offers is harmless: after the black rook on h3 comes back, the central tension opens up, and the two pawns of advantage have shrunk to one. Two moves later the same choice repeats: is what stays on the board, and instead there came , the same idea again, at the same price. At this point the opponent made the mistake he could still afford: instead of , and White took the queen with and the last fifty-four seconds before move forty-one back in his own column.
The rule for the moves before the time control: pick from the good moves the one that leaves the least to calculate afterwards. The queen trade offers demands more, not less, of the calculation that follows. If you have no time, play the move that does not make you calculate the same thing again tomorrow.
GM Aleksandar Indjic (SRB, 2598)
GM Nico Georgiadis (SUI, 2535)
The clock again, second pass: 50.b5
After the time control 2:05 had turned into some thirty-two minutes, and moves forty-four through forty-nine spent thirty of them without deciding the position. The advantage had sunk from two pawns to a quarter, but the passed pawn on b6 still stood, and with White would have picked up the d5 pawn and pushed the bishop on c6 out of the game. That move trades pawns for pawns and drags his own b6 pawn into a rook ending the opponent no longer wins.
looks similar and is not. The pawn goes to a square the black bishop already eyes: , and the calculation behind it, , does not end on but on , and the knight on c2 falls because it sat on the square the bishop entered with check. Counted after the sequence: White is a knight worse. instead of would have kept the knight, but not the position after the pawn loss, and certainly not with four minutes for the rest.
The rule connecting the two moves: a bishop on an open diagonal is a calculation you make before your own move, not after. places the pawn on a square where the bishop is waiting; places the rook on a square the bishop reaches with check. In both cases the diagonal is the question and the answer, and in both cases the reason the question was not asked is the clock.
GM Aleksandar Indjic (SRB, 2598)
GM Nico Georgiadis (SUI, 2535)
Verdict
A half point on board two with White against a grandmaster whose rating sits high in the 2500s is what the team counts on, and for thirty-seven moves the half point was in hand. The passed pawn on b6, the structure after , the whole second pass of queenside pawns: that was the work of a game you would like to see performed on board two. What it cost at the end was, for the third time in this olympiad, the clock, as in round six and in round eight, and this time the opponent was the first to take up the time he was handed. On board one Sebastian Bogner lost to Sarana as well, so these two zeros add up to what also happens in an eleven-round event against a team of this class. A bitter afternoon for a player who deserved to finish the position he had built with a few more minutes on his clock.
Moves
0-1
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