Tata R8: Nakamura loses to Carlsen, leads with Anand

General info
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament is held from Friday, January 14th till Sunday, January 30th, 2011 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Besides many amateur events there are three Grandmaster Groups (A, B and C), all 14-player round-robins. All rounds begin at 13.30 CET, except for the last which begins at 12.00 hours. There are three rest days: on January 19th, 24th, and 27th. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds increment for each move starting from the first move. More info here.January 23rd, 2011: Round 8
"The real tournament for me starts probably tomorrow," Hikaru Nakamura said after he beat Jan Smeets in the 7th round. The American was referring to his tough second half, in which he would meet the players who are doing well so far, including the trio Anand, Carlsen and Kramnik. Only a day later, in his game against Magnus Carlsen, Nakamura would find out how close he had been to the truth.The game started as a Sicilian Najdorf and already at an early stage Carlsen showed his will to win, with a g2-g4 push. Soon the two reached a typical middlegame position with opposite castling. Nakamura decided to put his bet on getting a knight on the thematical c4 square, but Carlsen found some clever manoeuvres like Kb1-a1 and Bf4-c1, which basically avoided tricks based on ...d6-d5 and ...Nc4xb2.

There was nothing wrong either with 26.Rdf1, where online spectators were raving about 26.Nxe6 Rxe6 27.Rdf1 which should win as well. The computer's 'improvement' for Nakamura was 26...Qe5, but Carlsen's gut feeling that 27.Qd3 should win there for White can be supported by a sample variation like 27...b5 28. Bf4 Qc5 29.Bxh6! gxh6 30. Rxf8+! Rxf8 31.Nxe6 Qb4 32.b3. More of this game later in Carlsen's press conference on video, in a separate post.
Vishy Anand took a different approach: safety first. It might have been related to the tournament situation, or to his opponent Levon Aronian, against whom Anand has a lousy score with White over the last few years. In any case, the Indian went for one of those typical Marshall endings where White has an extra pawn of almost no importance. "He's just going for a draw," GM Jan Gustafsson said in the press room, and we won't argue with that. Update: It's not that simple. If Anand had played Ke1 instead of Ke2 at the end, White can still try.





Games Group A
Game viewer by ChessTempoTata 2011 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group A
Tata 2011 | Round 8 Standings Grandmaster Group A

Games Group B
Game viewer by ChessTempoTata 2011 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group B
Tata 2011 | Round 8 Standings Grandmaster Group B

Games Group C
Game viewer by ChessTempoTata 2011 | Schedule & results Grandmaster Group C
Tata 2011 | Round 8 Standings Grandmaster Group C
