Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Fedoseev’s Swindle
You may think that playing with two queens is an easy win. That is probably what Ian Nepomniachtchi thought but he suffered a painful defeat in the Julius Baer Generation Cup (JBGC)
The Julius Baer Generation Cup (JBGC) is part of the Champions Chess Tour. The Tour is an online tournament composed of six events throughout the year.
The 2023 JBGC took place between August 30 and September 3, and is an online competition supported by the Swiss bank Julius Baer.
The 2023 edition gathered 56 participants sorted into three divisions of 8, 16, and 32 players respectively. In each division, the format was a double-elimination rapid chess. The time modus was 15 minutes plus a 3-second increment.
The total prize fund for the tournament was $235.000.
Ian Nepomniachtchi won in Division II, remaining in the winners’ bracket with clear victories against his opponents. However, in the first game of round 2, he suffered a painful defeat against Vladimir Fedoseev.
The game featured the Petroff Defense. Although that opening is famous for its high rate of draws, it was not the case on this occasion, and players embarked on an intense and tactical fight.
Ironically, at the end of this rapid game, Fedoseev had only 26 seconds of remaining time, against 2 minutes and 16 seconds for Nepo. Clearly, Nepomniachtchi had one of his moments of overconfidence and wasn’t in a convenient state of mind to properly evaluate the position. Otherwise he would have seen the tactics.
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