Game of the Week: Svidler, Grischuk

As we catch our breath and try to recover from the incredible finish to the FIDE Candidates tournament that had servers and websites around the world crashing under the weight of immense numbers of viewers, we will have one more look at an exciting game that did not receive game of the week coverage. Nearly buried beneath the story of Carlsen’s nervous but barely sufficient finish and Kramnik’s heroic second half charge (until the final round) was the fine result of Peter Svidler, who went from middle of the pack to a half-point from the top spot. In the final context, out featured game takes on more significance. In any case, the battle between Svidler and Alexander Grischuk from round nine stands on its own, a mind-bending morass of complications with both players showing great ingenuity. Let’s try to make some sense of what happened that day.