The highlights of a long and tough double-round day was the amount of Queen sacrifices on offer and potentially being missed!
The Chess World quickly noticed an absolutely insane game played by Simon Williams in the morning round. Something tells us Simon isn’t a morning person but that didn’t stop him. He sacrificed a pawn for the initiative and then made a gorgeous Queen sacrifice followed by this brilliant move
The final move also got the coveted “brilliant move” by Chess.com’s analytical tool. Check out the game
Another Queen sacrifice on the lower boards caught some eyes. Out of the Dragon, black found…
18…Rxc4!! and white falls apart. White allowed black to play out the mainline of the combination, a nice gesture.
A Queen sacrifice at the right time could have thrown spanner in the works for the top seed, Vasyl Ivanchuk.
Ivanchuk ended up having to defend a ferocious attack by Panchanathan.
Here was one moment where instead of 26.Nh6+ the move 26.h6 would have been highly interesting For example 26…Bxg2 gives white the interesting Queen sacrifice opportunity 27.Qxe8!? Qxe8 28.hxg7. Black surely can’t defend here!.
Instead, white lost the thread and Ivanchuk took over.
Ivanchuk is one of 10 players with 3 out of 3. He faces the Greek, Evgenios Ioannidis in the 4th round.
The action continues in the 4th round tomorrow which start at 15 PM local time (GMT).
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