Sao Paulo Chess Masters R3: Fabiano Caruana in Lead

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

The third day at the Sao Paulo Chess Masters Grand Slam witnessed three draws: Aronian drew with Vallejo, Caruana drew with Anand and Carlsen drew with Karjakin. Two more rounds are to be played after Thursday's rest day. The next half of the event would then proceed to the city of Bilbao in Spain from October 8 to 13. The standings are:

Fabiano Caruana: 7
Levon Aronian: 5
Magnus Carlsen: 4
Viswanathan Anand: 3
Francisco Vallejo: 2
Sergey Karjakin: 1

Fabiano Caruana could not convert his advantage and drew with Viswanathan Anand. Anand defended a position well with three vs four pawns and even if there was a win somewhere it would have been difficult to achieve for Caruana.

 

In the Aronian-Vallejo duel, the Spanish champion gained a clear opening advantage and he seemed on his way to earning his first victory of the tournament. The errors committed by the Armenian double Olympic champion only served to increase the Minorcan’s advantage. However, Vallejo decided not to enter into the endgame, in an excess of respect for the quality of his opponent and gave up the advantage to enter a line which which allowed him to easily maintain a draw and with it his second point on the scoreboard. “The way things were, I am satisfied with the draw achieved,” said Vallejo.

In the third matchup starring Carlsen and Karjakin, the Russian obtained his promising first place in the Final, to later throw away the advantage in a slightly misguided mid game, which condemned him to playing the endgame in an inferior position. In this last stage, world number one, Carlsen, was about to repeat the fatal error he made on the first day, and through an excess of ambition, gave clear opportunities to his opponent to win, that the latter was unable to take advantage of since the time on the clock was thrown on top of
him. In short, it was a fair draw in a back and forth encounter which either of them could have won.

The matches can be followed live on the tournament’s oficial website www.bilbaomastersfinal.com and will resume on Friday.

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