Bareev outshines Topalov

Evgeny Bareev of Russia bounced back from his opening loss against Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, winning the second game of their semi-final ma...

Evgeny Bareev of Russia bounced back from his opening loss against Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, winning the second game of their semi-final match in the Candidates8217; tournament today. With two games to go, the result left their match tied 1-1. In the other match, Hungary8217;s Peter Leko drew against Alexei Shirov of Spain in their second game and leads 1.5-0.5.

Bareev played the Caro-Kann defence and, on move 15, varied from his game against Englishman Michael Adams in the preliminary round of this event. The position was even and a draw might have been expected in short order. But Bareev opened the B-file, on which Shirov8217;s king was standing, and kept probing. On move 35, his queen broke into Topalov8217;s position and won a pawn.

Although the open position and Topalov8217;s passed pawn on C5 gave Bareev technical difficulties in converting the win, Bareev was up to the task and was clearly winning when Topalov blundered on move 57.

Faced with a checkmate or ruinous loss of material, Topalov resigned two moves later.

In the other semi-final, Leko 8212; the winner of yesterday8217;s first game 8212; chose the relatively quiet 6.Be2 line against Shirov8217;s Najdorf Sicilian. Shirov8217;s 15th move was a novelty, which involved a temporary pawn sacrifice. The players agreed to split the point on move 29.

The semi-finals, which resume tomorrow with the third game, consist of four-game matches plus rapid and blitz tie-breakers if necessary. The two winners will face each other in a four-game final.

The tournament winner will face Vladimir Kramnik, one of two current world champions, in a match for his title next spring.

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Under a reunification agreement reached in Prague in May, the winner of that match will play the winner of a match between current FIDE champion Ruslan Ponomariov and Garry Kasparov next fall.

That match will unify the World Chess Championship for the first time since 1993 when then-champion Kasparov broke with FIDE.

Kramnik defeated Kasparov in 2000 in a match organised by Braingames.Net.

Einstein Group plc, a British company that bought the rights to the champions from Braingames.Net, is sponsoring this tournament, next year8217;s championship match between the Kramnik and the winner here, as well as match between Kramnik and a top computer programme scheduled for October in Bahrain.

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The games in Dortmund are played at the so-called 8220;classical8221; time-control of 40 moves in two hours.