Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Korchnoi Clobbers Caruana

Viktor Korchnoi, former World Championship contender who will be 80 years old in March, defeated 2721 rated super-grandmaster and 18-year-old Fabiano Caruana with the black pieces in the 2nd round of the Gibraltar Masters, avenging their previous meetings. While Korchnoi is said to be the oldest actively playing grandmaster, Caruana was the youngest American (or Italian as he plays under the Italian flag) to achieve grandmaster (at age 14), beating the previous record of Hikaru Nakamura. (Ray Robson has a claim to this title if Caruana is not counted as an American.) Korchnoi was on the black side of a Ruy Lopez, a position he's been in at least 20 times before in his professional chess career. When Fabiano stumbled with 28. Re1 and 29. Re3, Viktor took control with 29... Bxd3!. After 44. g5 it was all but over for the younger player. See the game below as a video from chessworld.net or in the Chess.com game viewer.



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