I hadn’t played for a while before the event, but had done some prep at home and played a few successful training games. The tournament wasn’t a disaster but was rather frustrating, as it seemed a long list of missed opportunities, but some of them weren’t easy to spot, at least for me!
I have reviewed some key misses below.
In my first game with Naiditsch I made a very casual move in the opening and after fortunately surviving this later missed good chances.
I managed to surprise Kramnik in the opening the next day with the Tromp, but things went downhill from there. I salvaged a lucky half point later on, the long game meant that we both missed the start of the Football World Cup Final. It’s easy to see that Germany has a very successful football team the celebrations would have been much wilder in England!
Round 3 was a fairly solid draw with Peter Leko, the next day was the worst as I missed many chances against Ponomariov.
The next day was deja vu again as once more I squandered an edge.
After so many missed opportunities it was no surprise I was punished with a defeat against Caruana. He played very well as he did throughout the event but I wasn’t happy with my play or clock handling.
At least a win in the last round finished on a high note.
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