Carlsen Increases Tata Steel Lead; Anand Held To Draw In Gibraltar

On Tuesday, Magnus Carlsen increased his lead to a full point at the Tata Steel Masters. Two thousand kilometers southwest of Wijk aan Zee, Vishy Anand started with a draw in Gibraltar.

The Tata Steel masters is starting to look like a typical Magnus Carlsen tournament. After a slow start he is now running away from the pack — yet again.

On Tuesday, Carlsen faced tail-ender Michael Adams. The off-form English GM put up a good fight, but somehow the result was never really in doubt.

Playing another “club opening,” Carlsen was satisfied with a tiny edge in the opening. After doing 1.d4, Nf3 and 3.Bf4 earlier in the tournament, he almost mirrored that against Adams: 1.e4, 2.Nf3 3.Bc4.

Adams went 3...Bc5 but failed to completely equalize in this Giuoco Piano. Carlsen won a pawn, turned that into an exchange for a pawn, missed a quicker win but was always in control.

A number of truly spectacular games have been played in Wijk aan Zee so far, and it seems that David Navara has been involved in almost all of them. In this round he was on the receiving end of a brilliant attack by Wei Yi.

This game started equally quiet: the 4.d3 variation of the Berlin. The character of the game changed drastically when Wei went h2-h4-h5 and castling queenside.

There haven't been many Berlin games where Black was crushed in under 30 moves. This game was Garry Kasparov's dream scenario when he faced Vladimir Kramnik 16 years ago, but we know that he got the nightmare scenario instead.

Annotations by GM Dejan Bojkov

The first few rounds didn't see any Berlins, but the dreaded variation is making its mark in the Tata Steel tournament now as well. However, when we get to see games like this, nobody will complain.

Interestingly, Fabiano Caruana tried a very similar setup against Sergey Karjakin. Here the attack didn't really get off the ground, but the game was pretty good nonetheless:

The other games ended in draws as well. Carlsen is now a full point ahead of Caruana, and half a point below the American is a group of four players.

The challengers saw no fewer than five decisive results. Anna Haast's winning streak was short-lived; she lost to Sam Sevian. Tournament leader Baskaran Adhiban suffered his first loss in his game against Jorden van Foreest.

The Indian's piece sacrifice wasn't correct, and the young Dutchman defended perfectly:

Adhiban now shares the lead with Azerbaijani grandmaster Eltaj Safarli, who drew with Erwin l'Ami.

Now the tournament is moving to Utrecht for one day. In the Railyway Museum the live commentary will be provided by New in Chess editors Jan Timman and Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam.

Tradese Gibraltar Chess Festival: Round one report by Kostya Kavutskiy

The 2016 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival kicked off today at the luxurious Caleta Hotel, with a total of 253 players representing 58 nations, making it not only one of the strongest open tournaments year-round, but also one of the most diverse.

While the first round in many Swisses typically sees many lopsided pairings and very few upsets, here fans were in for quite a shock, as none other than five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand ceded a draw to IM Szidonia Lazarne Vajda of Hungary:

Anand continues the strange trend of world champions entering open tournaments and drawing their first game! Recently Magnus Carlsen drew his first game in the 2015 Qatar Masters, and before him Vladimir Kramnik started with two draws in the 2014 edition of the same tournament.

Before seeing some of the other action from the first round, check out episode two of The Day's Play, featuring clips from the opening ceremony and interviews with Hikaru Nakamura and Anand, hosted by IM Tania Sachdev:

Top seed Hikaru Nakamura faced the Stonewall Dutch, and make quick work of Black's positional weaknesses before finding a nice combination (starting with 25.Bc3) to win Black's queen:

 A smooth start for 2015 winner Nakamura. | Photo John Saunders.

Second seed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave had to work a bit harder to win with Black — he first exploited White's timid play against the Sicilian to seize a space advantage before eventually breaking through with his powerful central pawns:

There were also a few super-miniatures, which took place in the bottom half of the tournament, surprisingly on adjacent boards!

The 2016 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival is a 10-round open tournament taking place from January 26 through February 4. Round two continues Wednesday at 3 p.m. CET/6 a.m. PST, with live coverage provided by Chess.com featuring GM Simon Williams and IM Elisabeth Paehtz, which can be viewed live on Chess TV.