Corus R2: Shirov, Giri and Robson lead

Grinding down Caruana in an ending Sunday brought Shirov a second victory . He's leading Grandmaster Group A as Van Wely was beaten by Nakamura. Carlsen got his first win against Smeets. In B and C there are two young leaders with 2/2: Giri and Robson.

The Corus Chess Tournament takes place January 16-31 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Next to hundreds of amateurs, three Grandmaster Groups (A, B and C) with 14 players each play a closed round-robin. The rate of play is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, and 30 seconds increment starting from move 1.

Corus Chess Daily News

Corus Chess Newsflashes

Games round 2

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Round 2

14:44 CET Today it was less crowded at the stage when the round started; the first round is always something special, and then most of the journalists and photographers will come (back) during the last week and especially the last weekend. Today is also the last round of the traditional Weekender, in which the amateurs are devided in groups of four and play games on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Among them is Lorena Zepeda, the girlfriend of KingLoek, who plays together with her sister Sonia.

After an hour of play almost every board in the A group is on fire. Anand sacrificed a pawn against Short in a Ragozin and Nakamura played a rare but aggressive line against Van Wely's Najdorf. A good round so far!

15:14 CET A long think for Smeets after Carlsen's 24.Ra7. The Dutchman's 23...Bc5 was new, where 23...Kb7 is known to be fine for Black. According to Rybka, 24...Rd7 is equal now. The two friends Kramnik and Leko are in more quiet waters but Karjakin and Dominguez is getting sharper by the move. Against Shirov, Caruana has a passed d-pawn that's two ranks away from queening.

16:58 CET As he said during yesterday's press conference, Van Wely plays all or nothing in Wijk, and today it was nothing. In a very tactical game, Nakamura crashed through on the kingside and only a sacrifice of the queen could postpone a mate, but a few moves later the Dutchman had to throw in the towel after all.

20:07 CET Both rook endings Ivanchuk-Tiviakov and Anand-Short were very drawish and both ended in a draw at move 57. The Sofia rule is not in effect here in Wijk aan Zee, but before the tournament the organizers did actually ask the players to avoid very short draws. It's another example of the different, but relaxed modus at Corus that seems to work well. (Other examples are the 250 Euro fine for arriving late, instead of the zero-tolerance rule, and small money fines for mobile phones that go off. It has proven very effective to hit chess players in their wallets...)

Shirov eventuall managed to beat Caruana in an ending and after a crazy, tactical phase, Robson eventually defeated Swinkels to get to 2 out of 2. Plukkel, the only 2200 player in C, got his first draw against Swaminathan while the other 2009 qualifier, Stefan Kuipers, actually won, against Grandelius. Ni ha and Reinderman is on 0 out of 2 after a loss against Nyback.

20:31 CET A small update on Carlsen-Smeets, as we got an email from one of our readers. Apparently the line Smeets played is not new but can be found in the Aquarium and Pocket Fritz 4 opening books. The critical line seems to be 20.dxc6 Rxd4 21.cxb7 Kb8 22.Be3 e5 23.b3 c3 24.Rfd1 Bh6 25.Bxd4 exd4 26.Rxd4 c2 27.Rc4 Qxc4!.

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C

Corus 2010 | Round 2 Standings Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Round 2 Standings Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Round 2 Standings Grandmaster Group C

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC: Group A | Group B | Group C