London Chess Classic 2013: Boris Gelfand vs Hikaru Nakamura in Final

Chess Blog for Daily Chess News and Trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2013

Hello everyone,

The London Chess Classic 2013 is going to witness the grand final between Boris Gelfand of Israel and Hikaru Nakamura of the USA on Sunday from 17.30 onwards local time at the Olympia Centre in London.

WATCH LIVE FINALS @ LONDON CHESS CLASSIC OFFICIAL WEBSITE

The semi-finals have just finished where Gelfand knocked out a determined Michael Adams and Hikaru Nakamura snatched a win on an endgame-jitters' from Vladimir Kramnik. Gelfand won the first game and drew the second with Adams to cruise to the final. Hikaru drew the first game and was a tad lucky as Kramnik stumbled. 

Earlier, on Saturday, in the quarter-finals, interestingly, three of the eight semi-finalists had an average age of about 40! 

Kramnik 1½-½ Anand: This pairing got off to a hesitant start which drifted into a a draw. In the second game, however, Anand played defensively in the opening and Kramnik beat him in a Semi-Tarrasch with a vicious attack. 

Adams 1-1 (2-0) Svidler: Mickey Adams beat Peter Svidler swapping rooks and converting to an easily winning king and pawn endgame. The second game featured a Réti-ish opening with Svidler winning back. But, in the blitz play-off, Adams won to cruise to the semis. 

Caruana 1-1 (0-2) Gelfand: The Israeli Grandmaster and former World Chess Championship Challenger also needed the tiebreaks to go through to the semis. Both main games were drawn, but Gelfand struck to win the tiebreak! 

Short ½-1½ Nakamura: The first game was a shocker defeat for Nigel Short and Nakamura held his ground to draw the second and get into the semis. 

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