Tata Steel 2013 Round 10 - Carlsen Does It Again

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess tournament is taking place from 12-27 January in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands.

This famous annual tournament has three separate single round-robin competitions, the A, B, and C Groups, each featuring 14 players.

The strongest tournament is the A Group and this year features 6 out of the top 10 ranked players; world champion Vishy Anand, world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Lev Aronian, rising star Fabiano Caruana, world #6 Sergey Karjakin, and US champion Hikaru Nakamura.

Chess.com has live coverage and commentary of round 11 on Friday with IM Daniel Rensch & The Poet.  See here for the latest details (scroll down the page).

Chess.com coverage starts at 05:30 Pacific, 08:30 Eastern in the US (13:30 UTC).

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Round 10 - Official website report

In round 10 of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament Magnus Carlsen increased his lead to 1½ points by defeating Erwin l'Ami in a hard-fought Caro Kann. l'Ami threw up a barricade early on and toughly defended for many hours, only to falter in the final hour of play, as has happened to so many others facing the world number one.

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Meanwhile, after drawing several promising positions in the first couple of rounds, and suffering a devastating blow against Anand in round 4, Armenia's Levon Aronian has quietly been working on his comeback. Today he achieved his fourth victory, this time courtesy of Wang Hao, who played so passively that he was virtually lost the moment White crossed the middle of the board for the first time with 19.f5. A kingside attack was beckoning, but when presented with a couple of pawns, Aronian preferred this option and easily won.

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Now sharing second place, Viswanathan Anand had Sergey Karjakin in a stranglehold early on, but whereas many would have succumbed, the Russian Grandmaster withstood the pressure. Once the Indian Tiger had circled his prey a few times to no avail, Karjakin collected half a point.

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Hikaru Nakamura joined Anand and Aronian in second place by beating Fabiano Caruana after a long struggle. Playing Black the American of Japanese descent rapidly achieved a comfortable position out of an irregular King's Indian, an opening the Italian of American descent has little experience with, being mainly an e4-player. Utilizing his bishop pair, Nakamura kept leaning on White's position until finally Caruana slipped up, allowing a venomous tactic: 54...g4! 55.hxg4 h3! and White is lost on account of 56.gxh3 Rf8! 57.Kd3 Rf4 and Black wins a piece due to the threat of 58...Bxe4.

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The battle for best Dutchman of the tournament came to a head when Loek van Wely completely mishandled the White side of a Grunfeld Indian against Anish Giri. The young Dutch Champion ignored various promising continuations and chose a safe line, winning a pawn but handing over the pair of bishops. The six-time Dutch Champion confidently steered the game into safety, maintaining his standing as Best Dutchman.

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The remaining Netherlander, Ivan Sokolov, was less fortunate, meeting a well-prepared Peter Leko. Like Van Wely yesterday, Hungary's number one chess player opted for the Nimzo Indian against Nimzo expert Sokolov. At the 2012 Olympiad Leko had suffered a painful defeat at the hands of Arkadij Naiditsch in the same line that appeared on the board today, and found the novelty 15...Nh5! in his preparation of the FIDE Grand Prix Tashkent in November of last year. Instead of defending a slightly worse position, Sokolov tried to punish Black's weakening of the b1-h7 diagonal with 16.Qc2, but was struck by the killer 16...g6 17.Rxe6 Nf4! winning an exchange, as for example after 18.Bxe7 Nxe7 19.Re3 Nf5 20.Re4 Black has the crushing 20...Nxg2! 21.Kxg2 Nxd4. Once the White attack had run out of steam, Leko took over the initiative and won quickly.

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Finally, former Women's World Champion Hou Yifan won her second game of the tournament, again with Black, this time versus Pentala Harikrishna. The Chinese Grandmaster obtained a pleasant endgame from a Sicilian Defence and managed to parlay it into victory deep in a rook endgame.

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Group A Standings After 10 Rounds

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Whereas tournament victory in Group A seems all but decided, the fight for first in Group B is reaching its climax. While leader Sergey Movsesian quickly drew against Daniil Dubov, Richard Rapport went the whole ten yards to bring down Alexander Ipatov. Close behind Movsesian and Rapport, Arkadij Naiditsch and Jan Smeets are in third place at 6½ out of 10.

Richard Rapport

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Group B Round 10 Results

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Group B Standings After 10 Rounds

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In Group C the epic battle between Sabino Brunello and Fernando Peralta continued in full force. Both players gave everything they had to beat Oleg Romanishin and Mark van der Werf respectively. Brunello is still in the lead with 8½ out of 10, with Peralta still lagging half a point behind.

Sabino Brunello

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Group C Round 10 Results

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Group C Standings After 10 Rounds

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Photos from the official website. Videos by Freshmen media. Games via TWIC.