GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave missed a golden opportunity to beat GM Alexander Grischuk and take the sole lead at the FIDE Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg. The French GM still leads along with GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wang Hao after all games in round four ended in draws.
“One of the deadly sins,” was how GM Viswanthan Anand described it in Chess.com’s live broadcast: the act of playing fast during your opponent’s time trouble. It is a sin we all commit in our own games sometimes, and one that might have cost Vachier-Lagrave half a point today.
In an extremely tactical Berlin endgame, Grischuk’s time disadvantage was even worse than in the earlier rounds. He had just 2.5 minutes left at move 26, and with just 30 seconds added time for each move, the Russian GM had 9.5 minutes in total to make 14 moves and reach the time control. He needed to do all of this while constantly under pressure from the clock. (Read more). Photo and news: chess.com
