Carlsen On A Roll But Caruana Keeps The Pace

Magnus Carlsen is on a roll at the Tata Steel Masters. Saturday he beat Pavel Eljanov and scored his third consecutive win. The world champ still shares the lead with Fabiano Caruana who beat Ding Liren.

As long as there's football, Magnus Carlsen will be doing fine. This axiom seems to be manifesting itself further.

On the rest day the Norwegian could be found on the green pitch; from that moment he won three games in a row. (And on Saturday night he was in the Amsterdam Arena, watching Ajax beating Vitesse 1-0.)

His future opponents might be worried by now. Last year, after two draws and a loss, Carlsen won no less than six straight games.

His victim today was Pavel Eljanov, who went for something that suits his style: a Catalan. Still, Carlsen created some dynamics early on with the remarkable move 10...g5!?.

If you just fell off your chair that's totally understandable. And it might look like a typical “modern” approach, so hold on to that chair before reading the next sentence: It originates from a Petrosian-Botvinnik game from 1963!

Boris Spassky also played it once, in 1990, and the now retired GM Ian Rogers once faced it as White against a young Ioannis Papaioannou.

Eljanov certainly played his role in what would become a great game full of sacrifices. Even a piece was given — by the Ukrainian.

A great game between Eljanov and Carlsen. | Photo Alina l'Ami.

Carlsen said he had seen the piece sac as an option for his opponent, and that accepting it wasn't the only way to play. “I thought let's go for it. I think the position was unclear after that but I don't think Black should be worse.”

The game saw energetic play by both players, but at some point Eljanov collapsed. “I wasn't so certain that it was winning,“ said Carlsen, “but certainly with the two bishops I couldn't be worse by any means and then I just took over after move 30.”

Annotations by GM Dejan Bojkov

Eljanov took his loss in a good way:

I lost but it was a good game today.The one you can learn from as I was overestimating my position almost all the time.#tatasteelchess

— Pavel Eljanov (@Eljanov) January 23, 2016

A key game in this round was the one between Fabiano Caruan and Ding Liren, who were both in first place, together with Carlsen. Again involved in the longest game, Caruana forced resignation on move 83.

The American GM deviated from Anand-Ding, Bilbao 2015 with 11.Nh4!?, an early knight maneuver towards the f5-square. It was traded for Black's light-squared bishop, and after the white bishop on a2 was swapped for a knight as well, Caruana suddenly gained control over the d5 square.

Caruana won the battle of the leaders. | Photo Alina l'Ami.

Soon after, Ding lost his c-pawn and it was clear that he had lost the opening battle. But good preparation is rarely enough to win games these days; Ding defended well. White's extra pawn was a doubled one, and Black controlled the center.

The middlegame with only heavy pieces was quite complicated and perhaps drawn somewhere; the computer suggests 41...Qd7 42.Qb1 Kh7 and it's hard for White to make progress.

After Carlsen won his game Caruana decided to steer away from the draw and keep chances. Strangely, it was right after the time control where Ding went from worse to lost.

Anish Giri is fully back as well — back to “plus one” — after winning the grudge-match among the two Dutch participants. Loek van Wely sharpened up the position in a Slav with 9.h4!? (where Wouter Spoelman took on g6 against Giri last year) and Giri's classic response was a pawn push in the center.

The fight between the two Dutchies in the Masters. | Photo Alina l'Ami.

The position was roughly equal until Van Wely chose the wrong route for his knight.

The fourth winner of the day was Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who is really having a roller-coaster tournament. He probably won't mind since he has already tripled the number of wins he ever scored in Wijk aan Zee! (He went from only one win in many tournaments to three in total now).

The Azerbaijani's win was the first loss for Hou Yifan who miscalculated (or rather: fell for a neat trick) just before the time control.

The other games ended in draws, and so it's now Caruana and Carlsen who top the standings. Note that they already played each other: a draw in round two.  

Judit Polgar is visiting the tournament this weekend and signed books for her fans today. | Photo Alina l'Ami.

The Challengers tournament also saw a clash between two tournament leaders: Baskaran Adhiban vs Alexey Dreev. Unexpectedly, this game wasn't really a fight: Adhiban won straight out of the opening. That was quite an achievement since Dreev has written two books on the Semi-Slav!

The Indian GM in fact played a novelty (15.e4) which he had found already a year ago. His play was very straightforward: keep the enemy king in the center and keep looking for threats. 

After six straight losses Anne Haast finally put her name on the score board. Amazingly she defeated none other than top seed Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. The Romanian-born GM (now playing for Germany) played the opening badly and found himself in a lost position quickly.

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.