By IANS
Moscow : India’s lone survivor Krishnan Sasikiran seems to prefer the Blitz format of the game, as he won his mini-match in that fastest form for the third time in a row to eliminate Poland’s Bartlomiej Macieja and enter the last 16 of the World Cup chess at Khanty-Mansiysk.
After drawing both classical games, he also drew the rapid games. Then Sasikiran won both the Blitz games to emerge a 4-2 winner. He will now meet former FIDE World champion Ruslan Ponomarioav of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the biggest shock of the third round was the defeat in tie-breaker of top seed Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine. Ivanchuk lost to Romanian Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu 2.5-3.5 after the match extended into Blitz games.
Ponomariov beat Evgeny Tomashevsky of Russia in the classical games 1.5-0.5 to find a berth in last 16.
The fourth round features the following matches: Nisipeanu-Karjakin, Alekseev-Bareev, Aronian-Jakovenko, Shirov-Akopian, Sasikiran-Ponomariov, Svidler-Kamsky, Adams-Carlsen and Wang-Cheparinov.
In the blitz mini-match against Macieja, the Indian grand master Sasikiran showed greater control and beat the Polish player in both games. The first game lasted 57 moves.
In his previous two rounds, too, Sasikiran won in Blitz games after drawing both classical and rapid games.
Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu brought the big surprise in round 3 of the Chess World Cup. After two classical, two rapid, and two blitz games he eliminated the world No. 2. It seemed ironical as Ivanchuk won the World Blitz Chess Championship just a week ago finishing ahead of India’s Viswanathan Anand.
Round 3 had a clear pattern, win with white, draw with black. In the classical games there were 9 wins for white (five in game 1, four in game 2), one win for black (in game 2), and all other games were drawn.
In general the percentage of draws in round 3 is rather high, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the games. There was a lot of fighting chess and nice combinations.
A total of 126 players – two of the original 128 pulled out before the start-started out in the Championships and now only 16 remain. Each pairing plays two classical game and in case of a tie, they clash over two rapid games (25 min. + 10 sec./move) and if the result is still a tie, two blitz games follow (5 min. + 10 sec./move). In case of a further tie, the sudden death game decides the overall winner with white getting 6 minutes and black five with no addition. In order to qualify white must win.
Four matches were decided after the rapid games, in two matches the blitz games were played.