The Chess Mind

As often happens with the Melody Amber tournament, there's a tie for first with the winners coming from vastly different routes. Alexander Morozevich scored a whopping 9.5/11 in his blindfold games, a full three points ahead of Viswanathan Anand and Francisco Vallejo(!). Had his performance in the rapid games been even remotely up to snuff, given his rating, he'd have won the overall event in a walk, but instead he scored a disappointing -1 at 5/11. That allowed Anand, who won the rapid part of the event with 8/11, to tie with him for first overall with a total of 14.5/22.

As for the rest of the field, they were dominated, with Vallejo(!!) the closest pursuer with 12/22. Topalov's 50% performance was only so-so, but he has admitted on numerous occasions that he's not at all the same caliber rapid player as he at classical time limits, so this result isn't really a surprise. Aronian's -1 result is a mild surprise, as he is a very skilled rapid player, but it seems clear that he had come to enjoy himself, as evidenced by his many opening experiments during this event. Finally, while this is always a fun event, I think it could have been improved by the participation of Rustam Kasimjanov, who is, as far as I can tell, no worse than the second strongest (active) rapid player in the world, behind only Anand. (Maybe next year?)

Complete Results:

Blindfold:

1. Morozevich 9.5
2-3. Anand, Vallejo 6.5
4-5. Grischuk, Leko 6
6-7. Gelfand, Svidler 5.5
8-9. Topalov, van Wely 4.5
10-11. Aronian, Nielsen 4.0
12. Ivanchuk 3.5

Rapid:

1. Anand 8
2-3. Aronian, Topalov 6.5
4-7. Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Vallejo, van Wely 5.5
8-10. Gelfand, Leko, Morozevich 5
11-12. Nielsen, Svidler 4

Combined:

1-2. Anand, Morozevich 14.5
3. Vallejo 12
4. Grischuk 11.5
5-6. Leko, Topalov 11
7-8. Aronian, Gelfand 10.5
9. van Wely 10
10. Svidler 9.5
11. Ivanchuk 9
12. Nielsen 8