And then there were eight!

Vugar Gashimov and Vladimir Malakhov cruised into the quarter finals after convincing winning their play-offs. After five draws Ponomariov finally won in the sixth game to eliminate Frenchman Etienne Bacrot. Jakovenko and Gelfand needed blitz games to get them past their opponents.

The names of the eight remaining players are now known and they will stay in Khanty Mansiysk a little longer.

There are three Russians, two Ukrainians, two Azeri's and one Israeli, all of whom are rated more than 2700.

Here is a summary of the fourth round play-offs. Three matches required rapidplay games:

NameCountryRatingAgeClassical Game 1Classical Game 2 Rapid 3Rapid 4Rapid 5Rapid 6NameCountryRatingAge
Vugar GashimovAZE2758230.5-0.50.5-0.51-01-00.5-0.5Fabiano CaruanaITA265217
Etienne BacrotFRA2700260.5-0.50.5-0.50.5-0.50.5-0.50.5-0.50-1Ruslan PonomariovUKR273926
Wesley SoPHI2640160.5-0.50.5-0.50-10-10-1Vladimir MalakhovRUS270629

Clearly Gashimov and Malakhov were able to dominate their younger opponents in rapidplay.

For Wesley, it wasn't meant to be So!
©official site

The final two duels went as far as the pairs of blitz games which start from the seventh game and continue onwards.

NameCountryRatingAgeClassical 1Classical 2Rapid 3Rapid 4Rapid 5Rapid 6Blitz 7Blitz 8
Maxime Vachier_LagraveFRA2718190.50.50.50.50.50.50.50
Boris GelfandISR2758410.50.50.50.50.50.50.51

Boris managed to win the second Blitz player to overcome the young Frenchman who is less than half his age.

On paper the all-Russian encounter between Grischuk and Jakovenko was evenly matched and it proved to be with the difference only being made late in the day.

NameCountryRatingAgeClassical 1Classical 2Rapid 3Rapid 4Rapid 5Rapid 6Blitz 7Blitz 8
Alexander GrischukRUS2736260.50.50.50.50.50.500
Dmitry JakovenkoRUS2736260.50.50.50.50.50.511

In the three matchs that didn't require an extra day Karjakin, Mamedyarov and Svidler qualified.

Mamedyarov is the only player left who hasn't required any rapid or blitz games to advance in the competition.

NameCountryRatingAgeClassical 1Classical 2 NameCountryRatingAge
Viktor LaznickaCZE2637210-10.5-0.5ShakhriyarMamedyarovAZE271924
SergeyKarjakinUKR2723190.5-0.51-0Nikita VitiugovRUS269422
Alexei ShirovESP2719370-10.5-0.5Peter SvidlerRUS275433

In the quarter-finals Gelfand will play Jakovenko and in an all-Russian tie, Svidler plays Malakhov. The other two matchs feature Ukrainians playing Azeris, Mamedyarov taking on Karjakin and Gashimov will face Ponomariov.

For further information go to the official site


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