Caruana Wins, Cuts Carlsen's Lead To Half-Point

With three rounds to go, the race for first in the 2016 Tata Steel Masters appears to be a two Car (get it?) race.

Yesterday, World Champion Magnus Carlsen won and extended his lead to a full point. Today, it was GM Fabiano Caruana's turn to achieve victory and close the gap between himself and Carlsen to a half-point.

Caruana defeated GM Wei Yi in a convincing fashion to move up to 6.5/10 and +3. Caruana's victory is a small setback in what has otherwise been a very convincing super-tournament debut for the Chinese wunderkind.

Caruana evincing calm before the pawn storm. (Photos courtesy of Alina l'Ami from the official site.)

Carlsen had perhaps his toughest assignment of the tournament in round 10. He played Black against GM Anish Giri.

It has been well noted that Giri is the only elite player who Carlsen has never beaten. In classical games, their score stands at 12 draws and one win for Giri.

After the game, an audience member asked Carlsen what he still hoped to achieve in chess.

Carlsen's response, "There are certain players that I haven't beaten yet that I want to beat...not going to name names," revealed that he was not ignorant of the game's stakes today.

Motivated or unmotivated, an inaugural win against Giri was never within Carlsen's grasp today. Carlsen, in fact, had difficulties in the opening and was extremely critical of his own play.

Carlsen draws Giri for the 12th time, gets closer to #TataSteelChess victory: "I'm really ashamed of the way I played."

— Tarjei J. Svensen (@TarjeiJS) January 27, 2016

In light of the opening, Carlsen's aspirations were to ease the pressure and equalize. He did so confidently, and the game soon petered to a draw.

Fans of the English grandmaster, Michael Adams, were thrilled to see him score his first win of the tournament. 

It is not clear what Adams' opponent, GM Sergey Karjakin, missed in the London System today, but it is rare to see a player of Karjakin's caliber so thoroughly outplayed by move 25.

Annotations by GM Dejan Bojkov

In the final decisive game of the round, GM Pavel Eljanov eked out a win against GM Hou Yifan who missed the salvation offered by a paradoxical queen trade when down material.

2016 Tata Steel Masters| Round 10 Standings

Adhiban outplayed Safarli, who eventually sacrificed an exchange hoping for counterplay that was simply insufficient.

In an instructive moment, Safarli could have drawn the game by ditching his kingside pawns in return for activity.

This result moved Adhiban to 7.5/10 and clear first. He needed the victory to stay ahead of GM Alexey Dreev who successfully punished IM Nino Batsiashvili's capture of the classic poisoned pawn on b2.

Several additional intriguing tactics were on display in the challengersgroup. Readers may enjoy finding the GM-elect Jorden Van Foreest's typical blow against GM Benjamin Bok.

2016 Tata Steel Challengers | Round 10 Standings

Round 10 in the Tata Steel Chess tournament was played in the Dutch Railway Museum in Utrecht. The location proved to be quite popular as over 5,000 spectators turned out to watch the games and cheer on the competitors.

Small impression of the start of the round. #tatasteelchess pic.twitter.com/a4Km6EmONl

— Jeroen Van Den Berg (@Jvdbergchess) January 27, 2016

Also today, students competed in a primary school chess tournament in the museum. The organizers declared the event a great success as more than 400 enthusiastic juniors participated.

Photo credit to Karen de Bruijn via Twitter.

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.