Analysis
The game in detail
GM Wesley So (USA, 2774) vs GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778) · 1-0
Board 1, United States vs Uzbekistan · Sicilian Defence, French Variation (B40) · 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.
The game on video 12:46
The whole game from move one to the resignation, told rather than read: the move that offered the repetition, the push and the refutation that was never played, and the two moves under a minute that lost the game. With the evaluation bar and the clocks from the broadcast.
Round nine of the Olympiad, board one on an afternoon when the leading group is being sorted: Javokhir Sindarov, 2778, with Black against Wesley So, 2774. Sindarov was on board one for Uzbekistan, and after beating Bluebaum in round eight he sat down at a board that could have been a quiet half point. So chose the quietest setup against the Sicilian with ...e6, , the minor pieces came off in a few moves, and by move seventeen the position was a tactical nothing.
It did not stay nothing. invited a repetition, So instead played , after ?! the reply was on the board and stayed unplayed. From move thirty-six the black clock ran under a minute, ?! lost the h-pawn, ?? lost the game. After the mistake-free defence of round six, this is the day on which the move that had to be found once was missed twice.
The repetition offered: 17...Nh5
The Sicilian with is the kind of setup where White rarely brings more than one idea and Black rarely brings less than a workable structure. After the white light-squared bishop came off, and with Sindarov had moved his king off the diagonal, tucked the rook onto the second rank, and handed the question of what to do next back to So.
put the rook on e1, and Sindarov spent nineteen minutes and forty-three seconds. was the answer. The move offers a quiet knight tour and invites White to let it return with . After the position stood on the board for the second time, and one more would have ended the game.
Nothing forces White to play , and is not the move the position asks for. , and keep White’s edge at a fifth of a pawn; costs a bit more, less than half a unit, but enough to say that Sindarov, with Black on board one against a 2774, was already counting the half point as a result and saving the rest of the clock for the repetition. The rule underneath needs no dressing: on board one you may offer a draw with Black, but the opponent still owes you his signature.
GM Wesley So (USA, 2774)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
The break that went unpunished: 24...d4
So did not accept the offered repetition. closed the centre, put the knight on the queenside, announced the kingside pawns. Sindarov spent twelve minutes and forty-two seconds on and, after , had the choice between , the quiet defence, and ?!, the push that was actually played.
is a tactical error, and calling it anything else would not be honest. The refutation is , a white pawn planted in the black kingside, and after it White is about three quarters of a pawn clearly better. The sample line runs : the white bishop takes the c5-f8 diagonal away, the black bishop chain cannot come back, and the pawn on f6 stays as a wedge next to the black king.
So did not see it. He chose ?!, the move that equalises again, and after the material was level and the assessment on zero. Sindarov spent twelve minutes and twenty-one seconds on and another nine minutes and fifty seconds on , and that calculation was rewarded. The separation of the objective and the practical judgement helps in a passage like this: was the mistake there was a punishment for; the punishment was not spoken, because is the move you either see or you do not.
GM Wesley So (USA, 2774)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
Fifty-nine seconds after the move: 36...Rc7
After the assessment sat at zero and the clock at five minutes and ten seconds. shifted the rook onto the c-file and gave a third of a pawn away; was the move that turns the rook’s pawn into a weapon. So played , a queen trade and a rook lift to d1, and with ?! he handed the edge back. After the position was level again, but the rook on h3 announced , and Black had to defend that pawn.
The one move that does both is : the bishop returns to its starting square, covers g7 and makes the second rank the rook’s road. After the defence holds, because the rook steps in front of the king. Sindarov played instead. In the game, after White has the pawn, the bishop on c5 helps nothing on the kingside, and Sindarov had to play on the next move anyway, one move too late to be free.
The other half of the move is the clock. Sindarov spent one minute and fifty-nine seconds on and had fifty-nine seconds left after it. The practical rule in the scramble before the time control needs no dressing: when two pieces defend the king and one is about to be taken, that one goes first. The bishop on c5 defended nothing on the kingside; sorts the defence, sorts a rook that already stood on the only open file.
GM Wesley So (USA, 2774)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
The move that ended the game: 39...Rc2
After White was two pawns better, with the bishop on a5 and the rook on the seventh rank. The one reply that keeps the game alive is . The rook stays on the fourth rank, coordinates with the knight on d5, and the sample continuation lets White keep the pawn, but the black rooks find each other, and the assessment stays at about a pawn for White.
Sindarov played ?? and left the fourth rank. So found after about eighty seconds of thought. The best defence Sindarov still had at that point ran : the rook had to take the long road back to c4 to recapture the pawn, and those two moves were two moves too many. In the game he played , and after the b4 and b5 chain ran on a board that had nothing left to defend against the white rooks on f7 and h7.
The rest is technique. , and Sindarov started spending checks from move 46 because any other choice had already gone three moves earlier. The rule underneath the mistake is a rule of the active rook: an active rook on the seventh or second rank has to aim at a point that would not otherwise defend itself. aimed at no such point; held the fourth rank, which in the endgame of this game was the only rank Black still needed.
GM Wesley So (USA, 2774)
GM Javokhir Sindarov (UZB, 2778)
Verdict
Forty-nine moves, the first loss in Samarkand and a point off board one on the afternoon the standings were being sorted. What separates this game from the mistake-free half point of round six is not the opposition but the clock: there he had twenty moves in which the only right answer sat on a full time bank; here he had to find two of them in under a minute. So punished not the first of the two, but the second. The road to Geneva takes such afternoons back, though not on the next rest day. It takes them back when the next black game on board one is a half point again, and the next white one a point.
Moves
1-0
Was this analysis useful?