VAR!! Aleksandr Shimanov vs Hans Niemann || World Rapid Chess 2025 - R9

Yes, this is correct. And their position is frozen. Ah, and then it distracts them. Yes, of course, because they are playing their game and you look up and there is nothing there. It is a draw between Mamadov and Maxime Vacher-Lagrave. Maxime with the black pieces would have been happy to close out a nice day for him. And yeah, you were right, Peter. There was going to be no hesitation. Exactly. As to which way to capture. And he captured with the e-pawn. But there are some disadvantages, swings and roundabouts, you know. Now the pawn on d5 is a little bit vulnerable. Whilst, as compensation, black does have the bishop pair. Yeah, this is how I envision actually Shimano being able to be successful in this super field. Like he has these special structures and also here. He is going for this special structure against the isolated pawn. He will put the pawn on c3. He will have very easy kind of development. And he just plays very quickly. He knows the structures. And very unpleasant to play against a player like this in fast time control. And I'm seeing now in the distance the PGN is slowly catching up with their position. So... Yeah, honestly, I fully agree with the players that this kind of has to be fixed because whenever you look up and you see on all the other boards there is action and you look up at yours and it's stuck and who knows, maybe there will be some controversy or whatever during the game that the arbiter needs to check the move number, any claims, whatever. You are in the dark without the coverage. So very nice call. It hasn't moved off of Bxf6. It was stuck on b3. I mean, he might have... You can't really go deep with only 20 seconds on your clock. Rb7 played. Blue arrow showing the only move and played by Hans Lehmann. Be7 to get rid of the threat on f7. Mm-hmm. And now perhaps, is there Bd8 to b6? Is that an idea? Oh, mom, to get that bishop to Idf2. Amazing. That is the coordination that could win the game. And Hans has found it. Bd8 to b6. This is a winning idea. The f2 pawn cannot be defended and there's no way to put the queen somewhere where you can play c5. Yeah, Shimonov looks to be going down here as his time is ticking lower and lower. I mean, if you part ways with the f2 pawn, I think you're just going to lose. You know, I think in a funny way here, Qe1 and Qxf2 might be played and we could get an imbalance where it's Bkn and then a few pawns against the queen and that will be interesting. Yeah. However, I do think you will probably lose that a4 pawn quickly and with the remaining Bn and c4 pawn, I don't think white holds a fortress. You know, if white had a pawn on f2, then I could see it happening without the f2 pawn. I just think you never hold that. Oh, Qe4. So not maybe the Qxf2 move that I was expecting. Instead, looking to hide this king on h3 and you know, there's still some work to be done. The f3 knight is defended by the bishop and queen here. But it feels like with that f2 pawn gone and the king permanently being weak on h3, there should be a way for black to just win slowly but surely. Some results. Yez Khan beat Nihal Sarin. We had Noderbeck beating Gokesh. So on the top boards, a lot of the results known. This is the key game remaining. Bishop to c7, targeting g3 played by Hans who has a winning advantage here. Yeah, and after bishop c7, why do you even play here with white? It's difficult to make a move that doesn't blunder anything. c5, Qa1, intending the very obvious Qh1, but what do you even play? Ne1, the response. Something has got to be wrong with this one. There is an idea to try bishop a5 but Qc3 played. Everything is being attacked. c5, g3, the knight on e1. The knight's going to have to move back to either f3 or d3 to defend against Qxg3. I guess that's what Shimonov is going to do. That looks like a flag. A win for Hans. Now, of course, it was going to be a loss anyway, it felt like.