Monday 4 June 2007

2007 Candidates Matches - Round 1 over

Round 1 has been completed in the 2007 World Championship Candidates matches, with 3 players going through after tie breaks.
Alexei Shirov continued a good career record over Michael Adams by defeating him 2.5-0.5. Adams had lead 3-2 with 1 game remaining in the regular games, but a final round win by Shirov shifted the momentum in his favour, and he carried that through to the playoffs.
Boris Gelfand also won 2.5-0.5 over Rustam Kasimdzhanov, with the first decisive games occurring during the tie-breakers, as they drew their 6 regular games.
The Aronian-Carlsen match was once again the centre of attention with the first 4 playoff games ending 2-2. It took another 2 blitz games the separate the players with Aronian winning both to go through to a next round match with Shirov.
So the match ups for Round 2 are - Aronian v Shirov, Leko v Bareev, Rublevsky v Grischuk, and Gelfand v Kamsky.
Having picked 6 of the 8 players to advance this far (Adams and Ponomariov let me down), I'm still going with Aronian, Leko, Grischuk and Gelfand to go through to the World Championship tournament.

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