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Good day everyone, welcome to the Chessdom live coverage of the World Cup. Our readers' vote proved to be prophetic as they requested to see commentary on the mini-match Kamsky-Adly. Yesterday's game was very exciting, with many turnovers, and finally ended in a draw. Adly has a chance to attack with white pieces, but we shouldn't forget that Kamsky is one of the best defenders on the world and his counterattack was fatal on many occasions. Chebanenko Slav is expected to be seen. Enjoy!
1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 Bf5 4.O-O Adly decided to avoid Slav defence and try with Reti opening. He obviously carefully examined Kamsky's games from Tal Memorial.
4... e6 5.c4 c6 6.b3 Be7 7.Bb2 h6 8.d3 O-O 9.Nbd2 a5 10.a3 is most common, 10.Re1 with idea was also played, even 10.Ne5 was seen.
10.Ne5!? And he's going for it! Ne5 was played in only 10 games so far, obviously one pair of Knights will be exchanged soon.
10... Bh7 11.Qc2 Adly is not afraid to play for a win, as we saw yesterday. He will patiently build-up his position, trying to exploit slight space advantage. Kamsky is fantastic rapid and blitz player (see World Blitz Championship on reports.chessdom.com/ world-blitz-championship) and he won't mind to play speed thrillers should the second game end in draw as well.
11... Na6 12.a3 Qb6 Kamsky gave up on trading Knights for now.
13.Qc3 Rfd8 14.d4 Idea behind Qc3 was not to checkmate black on g7, but to remove Queen from the Bh7 diagonal and play d4. Now we have some sort of delayed Slav or Catalan, where black light-squared Bishop is on better position. Sorry for the delay, we are waiting for the moves on the World Cup official website.
14... Qc7 15.c5 Adly decided to close the queenside and play for space advantage.
15... Nd7 Kamsky changed his mind and goes with Knights exchange. Dark-squared Bishop will be more useful on f6.
16.Nxd7 Qxd7 17.b4 b6! Very good! Kamsky is challenging white's pawn chain before it advances too far.
18.Nf3 Knight would be better placed on e5, if Kamsky allows it. (18.cxb6 axb4) (18.bxa5 bxc5)
18... Qb7 19.Qd2 Cleaning square for Bb2-c3, supporting pawn chain and stepping away from soon-to-open b-file.
19... axb4 20.axb4 Bf6 Official site has it that Gata Kamsky apparently won the game, but the scoresheet is wrong and incomplete. Congratulations to Kamsky for winning the match and progressing to the next round. Ahmed Adly also fought well, we should watch this young lad for top results in the future. Thank you everyone for following Chessdom live coverage and stay tuned for updates.
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