Schach – Vincent Keymer at the Grand Swiss: fireworks on the chessboard

The hype apparently knows no end: finally Germany has a chess player of the absolute world class again. When Vincent Keymer was stumbling into the top ten in the world for the first time in August, it was possible to hear and read everywhere. And rightly so: The 20-year-old has had an excellent year so far: he dominated the German championship and won a strongly occupied tournament in Chennai. In addition, in February there was his triumph at the freestyle event in Weissenhaus when he prevailed against Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen.

The candidate tournament calls

The expectations of this year’s Grand Swiss in Samarkand were correspondingly great, where the 120 best players meet. It is not only one of the most important tournaments in the chess world, here there are also two places for the candidate tournament – and those who win it will then challenge the Indian world champion Gukesh Dommaraju in the coming year.

Until then, it is still a long way. It is all the more rocky when the young generation around Keymer preferred a much more risky playing style than the establishment. In an interview with “New In Chess”, Keymer put it as much as possible: “I know the players of my generation very well, and we are trying to fight every game.” That makes the game much more interesting, but is also at the expense of stability.

Complicated endgames

This can also be observed at the Grand Swiss. After two sparkling clean games, Keymer took a lot of risk against the 14-year-old Turks Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş and would have been overplayed by a hair, but then saved the draw. In the next round against compatriot Frederik Svane, Keymer had a significant opening advantage, but then artified and only won because of his opponent’s mistakes. Happiness left him against the Frenchman Marc’andria Maurizzi: In a balanced runner final, he overlooked a possible breakthrough of his opponent in time and lost not only the game, but also the connection to the top. He then fought the Armenian Robert Howhannisjan in a complicated final in a complicated final – and made ground again.

Such a strong tournament needs an exceptional performance to assert yourself: half of all games have just been played – and so far only seven players have succeeded in remaining undefeated. Among them is also another German: European champion Matthias Blübaum plays a fabulous tournament. Unimpressed by the hype around his compatriot, the 28-year-old man with a rock-solid and very stable chess managed to bite up at the top, he is only half a point behind the Iranian leader Parham Maghsoodloo.

The 26-year-old Dinara Wagner shows up similarly in the two-week Grand Swiss, which runs until September 15: Although she lost her last game against Kateryna Lagno, she is only one point from the top for women.

Suboptimal openings

It is difficult to identify trends in the chess. A tendency goes to want to lead the opponent on the ice with slightly suboptimal openings. In the past, it was common for the top players to attempt to win at big tournaments by not being lost, more risk has now moved into the game. The motto: it goes wrong, but if you are doing well, it is rightly up.

This way of playing has already led to a mass of complicated and nerve -wracking endgames in Samarkand, which is difficult to see through computers. During the broadcasts, the world -class player and commentator Judit Polgár broke out for minutes in joyful laughter from whether the complexity of the final. The individual brilliance is no longer shown in the first 20 trains, but only after four hours of play.

This development seems to be very much to the youngest generation, which is pounding loudly at the gateway to the top of the world: both the 14-year-old Erdoğmuş and the two-year-old US player Abhimanyu Mishra are still undefeated in the course of the tournament. Mishra even managed to beat World Champion Dommaraju. After years of dominance by the Norwegian Carlsen, the chess is now so mixed up that almost everything can happen.