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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

75th Tata Steel Chess 2013 R4: Carlsen, Anand, Karjakin in Joint Lead

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

Hi everyone,

The 75th Tata Steel Chess 2013 witnessed five decisive games in Round 4 on Tuesday evening ahead of the first rest day in the tournament. You can click on the links to replay the game with Chess King. Wednesday is a rest day.

Round 4 - Tuesday the 15th
van Wely, L. - L'Ami, E. 1-0
Wang, H. - Hou, Y. 1-0
Nakamura, H. - Karjakin, S. ½-½
Giri, A. - Leko, P. ½-½
Caruana, F. - Sokolov, I. 1-0
Aronian, L. - Anand, V. 0-1
Carlsen, M. - Harikrishna, P. 1-0




Standings after Round 4
1 Carlsen, M. 3.0 2861
2 Anand, V. 3.0 2772 

3 Karjakin, S. 3.0 2780
4 Nakamura, H. 2.0 2769 
5 Caruana, F. 2.0 2781
6 Leko, P. 2.0 2735 
7 Harikrishna, P. 2.0 2698
8 van Wely, L. 2.0 2679
9 Wang, H. 2.0 2752
10 Aronian, L. 1.5 2802
11 Giri, A. 1.5 4 2726
12 L'Ami, E. 1.5 4 2627
13 Sokolov, I. 1.5 2667


It was a day full of wins and losses, twists and turns, but still one game stood out head and shoulders above the rest. World Champion Viswanathan Anand used the black pieces versus 2nd seed Levon Aronian to create an evergreen that left all present in awe, not in the least Magnus Carlsen who called it “mind blowing”. As the Indian Grandmaster explained afterwards, he used the preparation for his World Championship's match against Boris Gelfand from last year. A novelty on move 12 was the prelude to a series of sacrifices starting with 15...Bc5! Aronian plunged into deep thought, but was unable to solve his problems. at 3 out of 4 is the world's highest rated player ever, Magnus Carlsen, who slowly but surely increased the pressure on Pentala Harikrishna's position until it finally gave away. Harikrishna resigned before Carlsen could deliver the knock-out punch with his Knight. Also at three points is Sergey Karjakin who was lucky to escape after misplaying the opening against Hikaru Nakamura. The American Grandmaster was carefully nurturing his extra pawn into a winning queen endgame, until one slip let the Russian off the hook.

The best Dutchman after 4 rounds is Loek van Wely who moved back to 50% at the expense of his countryman Erwin l'Ami. The latter sacrificed an exchange on the black side of a Trompovsky, but never got anything to show for it. Also back on an even score is Wang Hao of China who used the advantage of a strong bishop over a stray knight to take down his fellow student at Beijng University, You Hifan. Italy's Fabiano Caruana bounced back from yesterday's loss at the hands of Anand by utilizing a 4-to-2 (!) central pawn majority diagram) to down Ivan Sokolov. The most balanced game of the day was the draw between Anish Giri and Peter Leko. The latter equalized easily in an endgame that arose after only a handful of moves.

In Group B leaders Sergey Tiviakov and Richard Rapport opened a gap after winning once more. Tiviakov used his superior pieces to outplay Predrag Nikolic, while Rapport used a nice tactical motive to create havoc in Sergey Movsesian's position. In Group C Argentina's Fernanda Peralta moved into clear first with 3,5 out of 4 after beating Holland's Lisa Schut, runner-up at the World Youth Girls Under 18 Championship (behind Russia's Aleksandra Goryachkina, also playing in this group).

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
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1 comment:

  1. Rating +/− Games FIDE Age
    1 Carlsen 2864.5 +3.5 4
    22 (30.11.1990)
    2 Kramnik 2810.0 0.0 0
    37 (25.06.1975)
    3 Aronian 2794.3 −7.7 4
    30 (06.10.1982)
    4 Radjabov 2793.0 0.0 0
    25 (12.03.1987)
    5 1 Karjakin 2785.1 +5.1 4
    23 (12.01.1990)
    6 1 Anand 2781.8 +9.8 4
    43 (11.12.1969)
    7 2 Caruana 2779.3 −1.7 4
    20 (30.07.1992)

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