FIDE 2002 Final: From Ukraine with love!

Mikhail Golubev
15.1.2001
www.kasparov.com/serve/templates/folders/show.asp?p_docID=19516&p_docLang=EN

 
The month break between the qualifying rounds and the final scheduled by FIDE quickly glided by. The final match between the Ukrainian GMs Vasily Ivanchuk and Ruslan Ponomariov starts in Moscow tomorrow, January 16. It is not that hard to surmise that this event will go down to the chess history and will be of epoch-making importance for Ukrainian chess. It was much more difficult to anticipate just a month and half ago that an all-Ukrainian final would take place, that two leaders of Ukrainian chess would be able to cross (using the terminology of ex-champion Anand) the river swarming with crocodiles called the draw of the FIDE KO. Vasily and Ruslan deserve full credit, especially bearing in mind that really neither of them was even close to defeat in the course of qualifying matches.
 
Vasily Ivanchuk was born on March 18, 1969 in Berejiany (Western Ukraine). He came on to the Ukrainian chess scene in the early 80s. He did not stay there for a long time, because Ivanchuk's breath-taking ascent to the top of chess hierarchy made him a super-star, a desired participant of any super tournament.
 
Excellent memory coupled with wide opening knowledge (at the age of 14 Ivanchuk confidently played both open and closed opening on the white side - it is not a very common case in our time of computer preparation) as well as an outstanding, on the verge of geniality, tactical gift became the foundation of Ivanchuk's success. The strategic depth of Vasily's play in his more mature years can be most likely explained by his titanic work on chess, which makes his fantasy look for new setups, ideas, as well as unexpected sacrifices and combinations, rather than by his natural-born flair.
 
The early 90s became the acme of Ivanchuk's achievements (we can say right now that it was only his first peak). Having beaten his coeval and competitor Anand, Kasparov, and Karpov, Ivanchuk won Linares, 1991 and became a universally recognized potential candidate for the chess crown. Ivanchuk's book with his annotations of the games from this tournament was published in Ukraine. The same year 1991 brought Ivanchuk his first painful failure. GM Artur Jussupov played probably his best match (maybe even the best event in his career) in the qualifying cycle of the World Championship and defeated Ivanchuk 5.5:4.5. A player of a clear-cut positional style, Jussopov won games 8 and 9 a la Mikhail Tal, having battered Ivanchuk with a volley of irrational sacrifices.
Later on Ivanchuk won many strong tournaments and remained (up to his failure in the tournament of the best six GMs in the world in Las-Palmas 1996) one of a few elite chess players who could not cope with his nervousness in the official contests of the world championship. He was unable to qualify under the old system, whereas the new one has not favored Ivanchuk either. He was eliminated in the FIDE KOs (1997, 1998, and 2000) in the early stages, having lost to relatively weak opponents due to unthinkable mistakes which are really hard to give a reasonable explanation to...
 
Having reached the final of FIDE KO 2001 Ivanchuk reversed this sad tendency. The victory over Anand (to whom he lost an unofficial but matter-of-principle match in Linares in 1992) in the semifinal is of double importance for Vasily. Let's not talk about this year, but in 2001 the luck (without which big victories are simply impossible) came back to Ivanchuk's side as it happened back when he was striding from the junior championships to the chess Olympus.
 
Ruslan Ponomariov was born on October 11, 1983 in Gorlovka (Eastern Ukraine). Ruslan learned the rules of the game at the age of 7. When he was 11-12 years old virtually all the players familiar with Ruslan's games already called him the future World Champion.
 
Sure, chess history knew many prodigies before Ponomariov (for example Reshevsky, Fisher, Karpov, Kasparov, Ivanchuk, Kamsky, Kramnik). However, even compared with such big names Ruslan's achievements look quite impressive, even if we forget just for a second that nobody played the world championship matches being 18-years old before. His victories in the European (1996) and World (1997) junior championships in the under 18 category at the age of 12 and 13 speak for themselves. At the age of 14 Ruslan became the youngest GM in chess history. Before turning 15 he debuted (7 out of 9) in the 1998 Olympiad. Just a few months later Ponomariov won a zonal tournament in Donetsk where he left behind the 19 best Ukrainian GMs except Ivanchuk, who did not participate.
 
Chess statistician Jeff Sonas holds that Ponomariov's progress is more 'stick-slip' than that of any outstanding junior - long periods of «minimal strengthening» are followed by impressive breakthroughs. The year 1999 was the year of «minimal strengthening», but bear in mind that Ruslan took on one of the best players in the world, Veselin Topalov, and lost only on the tiebreak after the exchange of the blows in classical chess. The 6.5 out of 7 result at the Children's Olympiad can't be regarded as Ruslan's achievement, because this tournament was not strong enough for him.
 
Nevertheless, even after such a period of relative stagnation Ponomariov became (at the age of 16) the leader of the world rating in the category «under 20» (Peter Leko had turned 21 by this time). Ruslan's main tournaments in 2000 fell in the second half of the year. He flopped in the FIDE World Cup in China (1.5 out of 5 in his group). In the fifth round of this event he lost to Ivanchuk on the black side in a very complicated battle. It is their only tournament game so far. Right after China Ponomariov turned in three brilliant performances in Europe (he scored a victory over 1999 FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman in the Euro Team Cup!) achieved the best result on the second board at the Olympiad in Istanbul. Apparently Rulsan did not have much energy left. He lost to the Vietnamese GM Dao right in the first round of FIDE KO 2000.
 
In the year 2001 Ponomariov triumphed in a little tournament in Kharkov, DID NOT win the Young Masters event for the third time in a row in a spell-bound Lausanne. Then he tied for first in an unprecedentedly strong European Championship in Ohrid (203 participants, mostly GMs), but lost to Emil Sutovsky in the tie-break match. In the fall of 2001 he won a relatively small tournament in Kramatorsk, then as a member of the Ukranian team Ponomariov won the World Team Championship. Ruslan made the greatest contribution to this victory. Only Ponomariov scored victories in the matches with his team's closest competitors, including a key last-round encounter with the Russian team.
 
Unlike Ivanchuk, Ruslan opted not to play for the Ukrainian team in the Euro Team Championship (as we can see both were right!). Ruslan's excellent performance in December catapulted him to the seventh place in the 2002 FIDE January rating list. Ponomariov found himself one position and 10 points higher that Ivanchuk for the first time.
 
Ruslan's style is recognizable but hard to define. Firstly, Ponomariov's talent is primarily strategic, which is less frequent among chess players. At the age of 12 he already played an «adult» chess, skillfully arranging his pieces in any type of position. Secondly, Ponomariov does not restrict himself to only strategic moves. He always sacrifices material and launches an attack when it is needed. I would say that first and foremost Ruslan is the sportsman who usually makes the best, the most promising move - it is virtually impossible to rope him into making a mistake caused by style preferences.
 
Certainly such all-around play looks amazing when it comes from a young GM, but is quite typical of a 10-year habitue of the chess elite, especially of Vasily Ivanchuk, who has the most diverse opening repertoire among the top players. Let's hope that we will see a really exciting match. The opponents have much in common: high professionalism, talent, Ukrainian citizenship, and most importantly, the ability to make chess interesting for the spectators. In this particular match one Ukrainian diamond will inevitably cut another.
 
 
 
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