Tigran Petrosyan: the tallest GMs in semifinals of Candidates Matches 2011

Levon Aronian, one of the favorites and the highest-ranked participant, was kicked out of the game unexpectedly.

Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian, who was one of the favorites and the highest-ranked participant of the Candidates Matches 2011, was kicked out of the game unexpectedly by his ¼ final rival, Alexander Grischuk of Russia.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Aronian, the third place winner of the Wijk-aan-Zee tournament and the winner of Amber, the grandmaster, who won numerous awards at different international events, failed to justify hopes of his fans and missed the opportunity to play against world champ Viswanathan Anand.

Grandmaster, Olympic champion Tigran Petrosyan analyses Aronian's style of play in a conversation with a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

“I think Levon's major mistake was the failure to win the first game. It was not characteristic of him, as he is a very vigilant player. Anyway, chess players have peculiar psychology and maybe this draw made Levon embarrassed. I think he had a real chance to win only in the first out of the four matches,” Petrosyan says.

He thinks that the first blitz game was unsuccessful for Aronian while Grischuk won a worthy victory. “In the second game Levon could summon his strength but repeated his mistake in the third one, failing to seize the opportunity to win. Grischuk is a very strong player and I predicted that Levon will have hard times if he can't win the classic chess games.”

Petrosyan draw attention to the fact that the tallest participants made it through to the semifinals. Following this logic, we can presume that Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) thanks to his height will defeat Grischuk while Boris Gelfand of Israel (Israel) will celebrate a win over Gata Kamsky (U.S.).

“The semifinal games showed that there are no favorites in this struggle. Gelfand will be stronger than Kamsky, I suppose. Kramnik will beat Grischuk and then the Israeli,” Petrosyan says.

The final meetings are scheduled for May 19-21 and 23-25.

Gohar Nalbandian, Hasmik Babayan / PanARMENIAN News
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