Maxime Vachier-Lagrave beat Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in a classical game for the first time in six years as he won on demand to take their Riga Grand Prix final to tiebreaks on Wednesday. Maxime felt his strategy of going for a “slow game” took Shakh by surprise, but there was nothing slow about the way the French no. 1 wrapped up a crushing win in just 32 moves. Mamedyarov, who had won just as easily the day before, shrugged it off as “not a catastrophe”. Don’t miss the final showdown!

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MVL 1-0 Mamedyarov | Riga FIDE Grand Prix Final, Game 2

The task facing Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on Tuesday was daunting – he had to win on demand against a player he had a 1 win, 7 losses classical record against, with his win having come back in the 2013 Bilbao Masters. He said the day before, “I’ll just be ready to play for as long as it takes!”, and although that wouldn’t prove very long at all, his initial approach was “quiet”, or to be more precise, the Giuoco Piano.

Here’s the position after 14.a4:





Maxime commented,

Here I think Shakh maybe was expecting something much more double-edged, and I’m only being hypothetical, but maybe he was not ready to play this kind of slow game.

It may also simply have been a case of the Azerbaijan no. 1 not being familiar enough with the theory of the position. Maxime mentioned he was following a So-Ding Liren game from the 2017 Tbilisi World Cup, and indeed except for the pawns on h3 and h6 the position is identical. It also occurred in recent Karjakin-Svidler and Carlsen-Ding Liren games, with Black always choosing 14…Ng6.

Shak’s 14…Rad8!? may already have been an inaccuracy, while after 15.Bc4 Bxc4 16.Nxc4 (“this looks like nothing at first sight, because the position is very symmetrical, but this knight stands excellently” - MVL) his 16…Nd7?! seems to be a serious mistake:





That allowed 17.d4!, and only now did Mamedyarov respond 17…Qa6!?. That was a case of closing the barn door after the horse had bolted, since in the Carlsen and So games the queen had gone to a6 earlier in order to prevent the d4-break, since the c4-knight would be hanging.

The white knights began to terrorise black, and when Mamedyarov played 20…c6?! to prevent a knight coming to b5 it only weakened the d6-pawn. 22…Nc8?! was another move Maxime criticised, since he considered himself to be essentially winning after 23.f3!





Mamedyarov decided he had to go for counterplay with 23…d5!?, but after 24.Qf2! Re6 25.Qg3! it was just a question of how Maxime would decide to finish off the game. He chose to play it safe by taking a pawn while retaining a dominant position, and that strategy was vindicated when Mamedyarov collapsed and resigned on move 32:

All in all, it had been almost a repeat of the previous day’s chess, only with roles reversed. Mamedyarov commented:

Of course it’s not easy, but it’s ok. Of course I want to win without tiebreaks, but he also played very good today. For me it’s ok, it’s not a catastrophe, everything’s ok. Yesterday I won a good game and today he [did]. Ok, tomorrow we’ll play one interesting match, rapid match, a blitz match, maybe. It’s very interesting!

Maxime noted this was the first time he’d experienced an exchange of blows like this in the classical section of a knockout. He felt fatigue was a factor:

Here also I think we might be a bit tired, because the level of both games… I mean, one player played well and the other didn’t, so I hope tomorrow we will be fresh and will be ready for some fight. Of course the best games are the games when both players play well and give a great fight!

“Of course in rapid and blitz Maxime plays much better, I think, than in classical chess,” commented Mamedyarov, and while you might dispute that, it’s certainly true that their head-to-head record is closely balanced in speed chess. As Shakh also noted, they don’t draw too many games, so we should be in for a fun ride!

Be sure to tune into the action from 14:00 CEST live here on chess24!

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