Shirov loses to Nakamura, maintains slim lead in Wijk aan Zee

Alexei Shirov lost his first game in Wijk aan Zee today. He was beaten by Hikaru Nakamura, who is now just half a point behind the tournament leader. So is Magnus Carlsen, who right after the opening won a piece against Vassily Ivanchuk.

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 7

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Round 7

15:09 CET Another very quick draw today in Van Wely-Karjakin. The explanation? The Russian is not feeling very well, and it's not really the Dutchman's tournament... The other games are relatively quiet, except for Smeets-Dominguez. Second Sipke Ernst expected a repetition of moves here, but Smeets just bravely continued playing.

17:31 CET Smeets and Dominguez eventually drew anyway, but after some very interesting complications. The two analyzed their game with pleasure and after that got some comments from both players for the daily journal. At first sight they thought there was not win for White.



Ivanchuk completely missed Carlsen's Rd1+Bb1 idea and could have resigned much earlier. Caruana-Anand and Tiviakov-Leko were uneventful draws and it seems to be Beating the Petroff in Short-Kramnik.



Tournament leader Giri is defending a rook ending a pawn down against compatriot l'Ami. Howell already won and will probably get to shared second place again because Ni Hua won't win against Naiditsch.

And then... the blow of the round. Nakamura defeated Shirov in an irregular Sveshnikov. He's explaining the game in the press conference which we're taping right now. A first interesting comment was that the American thought the Sicilian wasn't the best choice for his opponent, since now it was easier for him to play for a win than compared to e.g. 1...e5.

18:39 CET Some upsets in group C, where leader Robson loses to Vocaturo - who played a very nice game - but keeps his lead since his closest rival Li Chao goes down too, against Grandelius. Short is completely winning in a queen ending against Kramnik.

21:49 CET It seemed safe to call it "completely winning" as GM Sipke Ernst described it that way, but in the end Kramnik managed to safe the half point. Incredible. As forest pointed out, Kramnik could have even forced the stalemate one move earlier (do you see how?) Tomorrow is a big day with Shirov-Carlsen, Kramnik-Nakamura and Anand-Ivanchuk. We'll have GM Mihail Marin doing live commentary from 13:30 CET.

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C

Corus 2010 | Round 7 Standings Grandmaster Group A

Corus 2010 | Round 7 Standings Grandmaster Group B

Corus 2010 | Round 7 Standings Grandmaster Group C

Links

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