Endgame Virtuoso Navara Makes Carlsen Sole Leader In Wijk Aan Zee

David Navara stole the show on Sunday at the Tata Steel Masters with a study-like win over Fabiano Caruana. As a result, Magnus Carlsen's draw with Sergey Karjakin was enough to grab sole lead before the second rest day.

He had shown some fireworks in the opening before (against Anish Giri). Today David Navara came up with some magic in the endgame, and defeated a co-leader.

Fabiano Caruana went for the Nimzo-Indian and Navara said that in December he had played some blitz games with a friend in this 4.Qc2 line.

It was theory up until the endgame and White wasn't doing that great actually, until Caruana made an error on move 27.

The game should still have ended in a draw, but somehow Navara completely outplayed his opponent and finished with the very nice 50.a5!.

Annotations by GM Dejan Bojkov

Incredible game from Navara in #tatasteelchess! Beating Caruana with such a position is just incomprehensible to me; one to study.

— Sam Copeland (@Sam_Copeland) January 24, 2016

As Dejan Bojkov noted, the game was quite similar to a classic from 1921: the 4th game between Alexander Alekhine and Richard Teichmann, who played a match in Berlin in that year (and tied 3.5-3.5). Like Navara's game it is a textbook example for king activity in the endgame:

Navara won the endgame à la Alekhine. | Photo Alina l'Ami.

Magnus Carlsen is now the sole leader and all he had to do for that is draw his black game with Sergey Karjakin. He did it with 3...g6, his occasional surprise weapon in the Ruy Lopez. Before the game, with that move he had drawn with Adams, Giri and Nakamura and a won against Anand.

The middlegame looked like a King's Indian but without the dark-squared bishops. Playing without ...f5 and with a knight on b6 Black was quite alright.

Carlsen tops the standings on the second rest day. | Photo Alina l'Ami.

Hou Yifan was playing such a great tournament, but now she lost two games in a row. Today she was beaten by Loek van Wely, who quickly reached a “dream Sicilian” with a knight on e5 that couldn't get dislodged, and Ra8-c8xc3 looming.

The opening definitely didn't go well but Hou defended reasonably for a while. However, Black's dark-squared was just a monster and the attack played itself. Here's the game based on Van Wely's analysis with commentator Robin van Kampen (below):

Anish Giri tried his best but couldn't get through Evgeny Tomashevsky's stubborn defense. Wesley So also had an edge against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov but it wasn't much.

A very spectacular draw was played between Ding Liren and Wei Yi. It lasted less than an hour actually, and taken into account Wei's clock use (or rather, lack of) it seems the youngest of the two Chinese GMs was best prepared.

Short but spectacular! | Photo Alina l'Ami.

A very long game was Michael Adams vs Pavel Eljanov. The latter has a full rest day to curse himself for not winning this one.

In what was the first Berlin Endgame in the tournament the position was about equal for a while, but at some point Adams misplayed it. But in the end Eljanov missed at least three clear wins. Incredible.

A very narrow escape for Mickey Adams. | Photo Alina l'Ami. 

In the Challengers, Anne Haast clearly found her form. Yesterday she won her first game after six losses, and she duly added another win to her score today. And how! Nino Batsiashvili took a poisoned pawn on b2 and was killed in just twenty moves.

It was a bad day for the ladies since Ju Wenjun also lost, to Sam Sevian. Adhiban Baskaran continues to lead, with five rounds to go.

Last but not least, Judit Polgar joined Yasser Seirawan in the studio for about half an hour. For the many fans out there, here's the clip:

The Tata Steel Chess Tournament takes place in Wijk aan Zee, Amsterdam and Utrecht January 16-31. You can watch live streaming commentary daily at tatasteelchess.com/live with GM Yasser Seirawan and guests.