Exciting last round tomorrow after three draws today
Most probably Ivanchuk missed a win today against Aronian, and with it a chance to join Topalov in the standings. Anand-Topalov and Radjabov-Carlsen also ended in a draw and so there are still four people who can finish at least shared first at the Grand Slam Final.Anand was surprised by Topalov's choice of the Caro-Kann and decided to play solid. For this he chose a line from before the second world war, when they didn't appreaciate the march of the h-pawn yet. In no time a dead drawn position was reached, and after some moments of eye contact with the arbiters and some more moves, the game ended in a draw of course.
Anand-Topalov: nothing special this timeRadjabov-Carlsen was more exciting and it was actually Black who missed a chance to get a small advantage in the middlegame. He even lost a pawn later on, but he was never really in danger of losing.
Radjabov-Carlsen: chances for both sides, but a draw in the endAnd then people started to believe that Ivanchuk would do it again, after his many successes already this year: his position got better and better against Aronian and many thought he would win today and join Topalov in the lead. But he didn't, mainly because he got into timetrouble again. Not as bad as yesterday, but still, enough to make some small inaccuracies, allowing Aronian to defend the game to a draw. The Ukrainian was very disappointed and at first didn't attend the press conference, but after some ten minutes of cooling down, he did his sportive duty anyway and received another warm applause from the Bilbao audience.
Ivanchuk-Aronian: almost three wins in a row for the virtual world's number oneIt all means we'll witness a very exciting last round tomorrow!
A great player being disappointed tonight: Vassily Ivanchuk
Visiting Bilbao today and commentating: Paco Vallejo
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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