Ponomariov turns the tables

One of these two had to lose. In fact Ponomariov perhaps thought it was going to be himself after losing the first of the rapid games with White. However three confident wins in a row settled the issue in his favour.

Finally we know the name of the second finalist, who after a rest day tomorrow will play Gelfand in a Classical match (over four games) to determine the champion. Both Boris Gelfand and Ruslan Ponomariov (despite his fairly young age) could be considered 'experienced' and have competed at such a high level before. A rest day is really what Ponomariov could do with in order to get himself ready to affront Gelfand who has the advantage of having an extra day off.

So to summarize what happened today.

Name	Country	Rating	Age	Original seed	Classical game 1	Classical game 2	Rapid game 1	Rapid game 2	Rapid game 3	Rapid game 4
Vladimir Malakhov	RUS	2706	29	22	0.5	0.5	1	0	0	0
Ruslan Ponomariov	UKR	2739	26	7	0.5	0.5	0	1	1	1

Just to remind you here is how Gelfand qualified yesterday from the other Semi-final:

Name	Country	Rating	Age	Original seed	Classical game 1	Classical game 2
Boris Gelfand	ISR	2758	41	1	1	1
Sergey Karjakin	UKR	2723	19	12	0	0

So after a decent run and a handy pay check for consolation we can say goodbye to the losing semi-finalists.

Karjakin will gain from the experience and has plenty of time to come back and go further in future.

The less-well known Malakhov has made a name for himself here and will surely get plenty of invitations to top tournaments in the future.

It looked good for Malakhov at one point, but then it got worse and worse!
© official site

Here are some interesting statistics:

Name	Country	Rating	Age	Classical wins	Classical draws	Classical losses	Rapid wins	Rapid draws	Rapid losses	Blitz wins	Blitz draws	Blitz losses	Overall wins	Overall draws	Overall draws	Percentage
Boris Gelfand	ISR	2758	41	5	6	1	4	6	0	1	1	0	10	13	1	68.8
Ruslan Ponomariov	UKR	2739	26	2	10	0	6	5	1	-	-	-	8	15	1	64.6
Vladimir Malakhov	RUS	2706	29	3	9	0	9	1	3	-	-	-	12	10	3	68
Sergey Karjakin	UKR	2723	19	4	5	3	4	3	0	-	-	-	8	8	3	63.2

So Malakhov is eliminated despite having a better overall percentage than Ponomariov since the beginning of the event. Gelfand having the slightly better percentage of all the semi-finalists.

More details are available on the official site