Corus R3: Shirov maintains lead

Three draws and four victories for the black pieces, that's the scoe of round 3 in Wijk aan Zee's Grandmaster Group A. All Dutch GMs lost with White: Smeets to Ivanchuk, Tiviakov to Shirov and Van Wely to Carlsen. Nakamura won again; he beat Short.

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.

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Games round 3

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Round 3

15:34 CET After two hours of play, Tiviakov has a horrible position against tournament leader Shirov - look at White's rooks! Karjakin came with a new answer to the popular 5.Qc2 pawn sac against the Queen's Indian. His 20...0-0 was a TN compared to e.g. Leko-Barcrot and Nyback-Wojtaszek of last year. The Ukrainian seems to have equalised comfortably. Short is playing a very rare set-up against Nakamura's Najdorf, to keep the game as quiet as possible. In an Archangelsk Ruy Lopezn. Anand still has to prove whether he has enough compensation against Dominguez. Smeets and his second Sipke Ernst didn't manage to predict Ivanchuk's opening choice but White looks at least OK after grabbing the h-pawn. Caruana might have a tiny edge against Kramnik, who again opted for the Petroff. In the next update we'll also look at groups B and C.



18:13 CET A good day for Black! Shirov defeated Tiviakov nicely and just gave a press conference, which will be available later over here at ChessVibes. He said that White is probably lost already after 23...Kxd7. After his win in round 1, Van Wely lost twice; today Carlsen was too strong. The Norwegian used an interesting pawn sacrifice in the QGD and quickly won two back to win the rook ending. It seems that the Dutchman shouldn't have traded queens, to keep the intermediate move f4-f5 as a possibility.

Short 'chose the wrong plan' according to Nakamura and was blown away quickly. The American GM continues the great form he showed in Turkey last week.



Smeets's king was assualted with almost all of Ivanchuk's pieces. White went down after 27.Qe2? where 27.R5d3 to cover the third rank avoids Black's plan for the moment.



Besides all this fireworks we saw many draws today, including the encounter between the leader and the tailender Giri and Reinderman in group B. Ni Hua joined Giri in the lead thanks to a black win against Nyback in a Grünfeld ending.

In C, Swaminathan fell for a well-known opening trap against Swinkels. Vocaturo quickly beat Van Kampen with an aggressive 6.Bg5 system. Plukkel lost without a chance against Li Chao and Gupta beat Kuipers.

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