Reggio Emilia, 4th round being played today

Not too much has been going on in the chess world over the holidays. The strongest tournament right now is Reggio Emilia which used to be a really strong tournament back in the days, one of the top tournaments actually. It seems they are trying to bring it back and this year it is super strong. Almost as strong as the absolute strongest tournaments. In any case the field is interesting and diverse.

Other tournaments going on right now are the traditional New Year's Tournaments i.e. Hastings and Rilton.

So back to Reggio Emilia. After 3 rounds, Paco Vallejo is leading with 2,5 out of 3. The most surprising in the first two rounds though was Nigel Short going 2/2 against Gashimov and Morozevich which is a nice comeback after his disastrous London Chess Classic.

Against Gashimov he had to defend against an attack:



Which he managed to do, winning 23 moves later from this position. I have no clue what was going on but probably black's attack was unsound although he did have some practical compensation.

In the 2nd round against Morozevich he was completely lost on the white side of a Classical French:



Morozevich played here: 29....d4? which let Nigel back into the game. Instead he could have won rather easily with 29...Nf4+ 30.Kf1 Qg6



And there is simply no way to defend. For instance 31.Ne3 hitting the rook and defending g2 then simply 31...Rf8 and threat of ...d4 is very strong and white will lose material quickly. So Nigel got back into the game and found a nice overloading move here 36.Rh8-b8




Black suddenly falls apart. The queen can't keep an eye on both the f5 rook and the d3 knight after this move and taking on b8 leads to a quick mate. So Morozevich had to give up a piece and lost after having a close to completely won position.

Right now the 4th round is being played and my eye is on Short vs Vallejo:



In another classical French, black just played the interesting exchange sacrifice 18...fxe5 (19.Ng5 wins exchange). I like black in this position and will be interesting to see what happens. So far this is a good advertisment for the French if black wins here since Morozevich was also doing great in this line vs Nigel before not finding the correct path.

I also have an eye on Ivanchuk-Movsesian as Ivanchuk is handling the white side of a Close Sicilian Reversed which I play a lot with white!