Grischuk’s second at Linares, Khismatullin, made this cryptic comment at the end of his description of Grischuk’s loss to Topalov.
As originally posted here:
More entertaining stuff from Vasiliev at Chesspro:
Topalov is compared to… Clint Eastwood. At the end there’s Ljuboevic miming how Anand would “eat” Topalov if he played the same way in the match. Topalov admits he was a bit reckless against Grischuk but says he’s just getting in some training for the match.
Vasiliev talks to Grischuk’s second, Khismatullin, during the Topalov-Vallejo game, asking if you can really get away with playing as Topalov is:
In general no, you can’t… But in Linares – it’s ideal… – Dennis said with undisguised irony. – But in this game Topalov is at least thinking from time to time. Against Sasha [Grischuk] despite having half an hour he made moves without thinking for a second!
– How would you describe their game?
– Topalov did in fact have an advantage after the opening. After 15…Qf2 he found the strong 18. Nd4. And then he found some sort of possibility to transfer the queen to b2, to get some play, otherwise he could have ended up worse. Well, the move 21. Nxf5 – his… I didn’t even doubt that he’d play it. The move, of course, isn’t the strongest. He could have transferred the knight from c3 to g3 via e2, and then Nf5, Nh5 with an attack on the king. And Nxf5… What can you say? It’s his style. The actual evaluation of the move isn’t very high. It’s clear he was playing for time trouble…
Then what… Sasha played 27…Kg7 instead of 27…Kh7 which was winning… But Sasha had very little time… He went for g7… And after that he played the losing move 28…f6. If Topalov had started to think for even a minute (and he had 32 minutes left), he’d have found the winning 29. Qc1. Instead without thinking he played g5. Well, it’s just “tricky chess”… Openly playing on time… The position then was one that Sasha could again win. After 31.Ne7 he played 31…R8f7. Instead he had the move 31…Qg3, giving him a large advantage. And the next move 32…Ng4 also gave him an edge. And when they got to the time control the computer evaluation was zero everywhere. But in fact for a person it’s much more difficult to play that position with black than with white. One inaccuracy – 43…Qd6, allowing 44. Qa7, after which it’s very difficult to defend. And Topalov was quite accurate in converting the win… What can you say? A painful loss, of course. As Sasha twice had a win, almost in a single move.– Was Sasha very upset?
– When someone loses they’re always upset. More so because he missed a win. Write that Topalov won the game in the best traditions of Bareev’s favourite chess player.
I asked Dennis who he had in mind, but Khismatullin just smiled and said: “Everyone will understand”. Although I’m clearly not part of “everyone”, but I’ve written it as he said. Let the shrewd reader guess who he’s talking about. [I think it’s probably Jan Nepomniachtchi!]
Actually, judging by some discussion on Russian forums, it seems as though he was probably talking about Kasparov, who isn’t exactly Bareev’s favourite person.
