The World Chess Cup puts chess in the spotlight

There have been exciting times recently for chess enthusiasts, with the World Chess Cup. This tournament began with 128 players in the running and this number has now been whittled down to just four. The semi-finals saw Vasily Ivanchuk draw with Alexander Grischuk, while Peter Svindler signed peace with Ruslan Ponomariov.

Tensions at this point are especially high, with one out of the four players set to be knocked out of the next cycle in the championship. As with any game, whether it is a board game, card game or Foxy Bingo, excitement can be heightened when there is a lot at stake. This is exactly what is happening in the semi-finals of the World Chess Cup, and it is proving to be a close-fought race.

The winner of this tournament stands to win a massive $96000, which is the number as it stands after a 20% deduction is given to the apex chess body FIDE. So it is not only pride and accomplishment that is at stake here, but also a whole lot of money that would also be a great achievement for the players.

Many hours of play have led up to this stage in the competition. In the quarter-finals, Vugar Gashimov found himself on the receiving end of his attempted dismantle against Ponomariov while Svidler won the Bishop pair in the middle game.

After the two draws of the semi-finals, Monday will see the two Russian’s playing with black pieces against their Ukrainian opponents who will play with white. If there is a repeat of the semi-finals when it comes to the finals, there will be two more tie-breaker games. These will last for 10 minutes each and if the scores remain equal, two more tie-breaker blitz games will be played out. By then, hopefully we will have a triumphant winner.