Radjabov Takes Early Tal Memorial Lead

Teimour Radjabov took an early lead at the Tal Memorial today by beating Luke McShane to start with two wins from two games.

McShane had been holding his own against the Azerbaijani, but blundered on the last move before the time control to lose the game.

Vladimir Kramnik defeated Alexander Grischuk after the latter took the arguably unwise decision to play the King's Indian against the former world champion.  Kramnik made the win look easy, helped by opening preparation for the last Candidates event.

For the second day in a row, Magnus Carlsen looked lost after an opening oversight, but the world #1 has developed a real talent for holding on grimly in awful positions.  Morozevich missed his chance under pressure from the clock and eventually was made to work for a draw himself.

Evgeny Tomashevesky played unambitiously with white and agreed a draw with Lev Aronian after 25 moves.  By contrast, the last game to finish was a marathon 107-move encounter between Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakmura.

Nakamura pressed long and hard trying to turn a slight endgame advantage into victory, but the full point remained elusive.

The round 2 results:

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Teimour Radjabov is the sole leader after two rounds

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A smooth win from Kramnik puts him on 1½ points

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Carlsen suffered in a poor position for a hard-earned draw

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Evgeny Tomshevsky was content to get onto the scoreboard with a draw

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Fabiano Caruana's resolve held firm in a long ending battle

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The standings after 2 rounds:

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The pairings for round 3 are:

Photos by Eteri Kublashvili.  Games via TWIC.

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The 2012 Tal Memorial super-tournament takes place in Moscow, Russia from 7-19 June.

The format is a 10-player single round robin, with rounds starting at 15:00 local time (11:00 UTC), except for the last round which starts two hours earlier.

The total prize fund is €100,000 with €30,000 going to the winner.  The time control in operation is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves, and finally 15 minutes to a finish with an increment of 30 seconds from the start. No draw offers will be allowed before move 40.

The tournament schedule:

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There will be live video coverage on chess.com/tv (scroll down for the schedule) as well as at the official website.  The video coverage at the official website is available for replay here (Russian commentary) and also here (English commentary).

Last year Magnus Carlsen won the tournament, narrowly beating Lev Aronian on superior tie-breaks after both finished with a score of 5½/9. 

In case of a tie in this year's event, the tie-breaks are:

1. Number of games played with black
2. Number of wins
3. Result of direct encounter
4. Koya system
5. Sonneborn-Berger