Mig on Chess #81, 8.1.99
The next time 21-year-old Russian champion Alexander Morozevich shows up for a tournament his opponents might look a little green. This will either be because the thought of playing against the hottest player in the world today makes them nauseous or because they have covered themselves in kryptonite in order to have a chance against the Russian superman. While Viswanathan Anand has garnered headlines for his run of tournament wins at the top level in the past few years, Morozevich has won just about everything else, or at least everything he has played in. His remarkable play has the side-effect of highlighting the fallacy of only updating the FIDE rating lists twice a year as it’s crystal clear he is playing at a completely different level than his 2625 rating would suggest. In the past year he has run up almost impossible scores in strong events, hitting a 2900 performance rating on more than one occasion! (A TPR, or tournament performance rating, is a measure of how well you playe 14b0 d in that one tournament. 2900 is very, very rare, even for folks with real ratings of 2700 and 2800.) An updated rating list, such as that of the WCC (or whatever), more correctly shows Morozevich breaking into the top ten, as can be seen from his play.
Oh, his play? Well, he just finished decimating yet another tournament field, this one in Pamplona, Spain. Doing a fine impression of one of the bulls the town is known for Morozevich scored eight out of nine (seven wins and two draws) to take first place two full points ahead of Poland’s Krasenkow. His games were full of the creative energy that has become his trademark. He seeks complications from the outset, values the initiative over almost any quantity of material, and seems to almost enjoy playing with doubled pawns and other structural weaknesses that would horrify a more traditional player. Again and again he would throw his pawns forward in the opening, daring his opponent to refute his aggressive play and time after time he would come out on top in these experiments. With his foe’s pieces in disarray and a storm brewing on the board the tactics would come like a hurricane, usually leaving his opponent soggy, windblown, and down material or facing mate. In even positions it was never Morozevich who made the fatal mistake. Just when it looked like he would have to settle for a draw there would come the tiny opportunity he needed and WHAMMO! it was over.
Chess fans have known Morozevich’s name for years, although he is only 21 years old. At the age of 17 he scored his first 2900 performance at the Lloyd’s Bank open, scoring 9.5/10 and the world only wondered how long it would take until he was knocking on the door of the world championship. But the next few years weren’t kind to him and he failed to impress in most of the big tournament invitations that came his way. Apart from his first place in, again, Pamplona 95-96, he finished in the middle of the pack of the international round-robins and strong Russian events he played in. He even finished in clear last place at the 1996 Donner Memorial and people began to wonder if a player with his unbalanced style could compete in the world of category 16+ tournaments. But he continued with his nose to the grindstone, playing the tough Russian Cup circuit and when 1998 arrived, so did Morozevich. And this time he wasn’t taking any prisoners.
Ahem. Before you run out to stock up on canned goods and bottled water some questions remain. While these scores are very impressive, none were made against top 10 players. Morozevich has played only two games against players rated 2670 or higher in the past two years, so it still remains to be seen if he can compete with the big boys. (Those two were against Peter Svidler and Sergei Rublevsky in 1998 and yes, he beat them both!) But when the new rating lists come out we can expect to see Morozevich receiving some choice invitations and testing his mettle against some 2700s. According to Spanish chess journalist Leontxo Garcia Morozevich will be playing in this year’s edition of Dos Hermanas in Seville in April. Past events have included the likes of Anand, Kramnik, Karpov, Shirov, and other usual suspects. His risky style is an organizer’s dream and he hates short draws almost as much as I do. (According to ChessBase 7.0’s handy "player dossier" feature less than 6% of his games are draws of under 20 moves.) He plays 1.e4 exclusively with the white pieces and has a varied black repertoire that includes the French, the Sicilian, and various fashionable Slavs with which he has been very successful. (He has long given up the Chigorin’s Defense that he revived four years ago.)
While Morozevich was busy racking up points like a pin-ball machine, second and third places went to two of the other foreign invitees, Krasenkow and Holland’s Van Wely. Spanish number two (after Alexei Shirov) Miguel Illescas tied with Emil Sutovsky of Israel with an even score. Former women’s World Champion Xie Jun finished at minus one, about what her 2510 rating predicted. The rest of the crosstable was filled in with Spanish players with too many names and not enough points. Jesus de la Villa Garcia was the best of the lot, at minus one with Xie Jun. Junior hope Francisco Vallejo Pons, Oscar de la Riva Aguado and Lluis Comas Fabrego shared last place at minus three in a heartwarming display of unity.
