Tata Steel 2013 Round 11 - Aronian Narrows Carlsen's Lead

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess tournament is taking place from 12-27 January in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands.

This famous annual tournament has three separate single round-robin competitions, the A, B, and C Groups, each featuring 14 players.

The strongest tournament is the A Group and this year features 6 out of the top 10 ranked players; world champion Vishy Anand, world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Lev Aronian, rising star Fabiano Caruana, world #6 Sergey Karjakin, and US champion Hikaru Nakamura.

Chess.com has live coverage and commentary of round 12 on Saturday with BrotherJosh & GM Khachiyan.  See here for the latest details (scroll down the page).

Chess.com coverage starts at 05:30 Pacific, 08:30 Eastern in the US (13:30 UTC).

.
Round 11 - Official website report

In an exciting 11th round at the 75th Tata Steel Chess Tournament Magnus Carlsen was put to the test by Wang Hao who managed to reach a better endgame in a Sicilian Rossolimo. Just when the squeeze seemed to be on, the Chinese Grandmaster traded his active knight for passive black bishop, missing a clever defence that allowed Carlsen to completely equalize in the ensuing rook endgame.

.

.

.

.

.

In the meantime it had become apparent that both Levon Aronian and Viswanathan Anand were en route to victories. As it turned out, only Aronian made good on the promise of his position and, albeit with a slight hiccup along the way, outplayed Hikaru Nakamura with the black pieces.

.

.

.

.

World Champion Anand dropped the ball against former Women's World Champion Hou Yifan. What seemed destined to become a model endgame victory turned tragic for the Indian Grandmaster when he decided to transpose a winning knight endgame into a drawn pawn endgame. After, for example, 42...h5 Black should be winning, but after Anand's mistake 42...Nf5?, Hou Yifan found the narrow path to a draw.

.

.

.

.

Holland's promise Anish Giri had seen many good positions dwindle away to nothing in recent days, but today he hit the jackpot against Fabiano Caruana. The Italian's greed in a Catalan was punished severely by the Dutchman who could chose between many roads to victory, but his choice of simply sending all troops to the enemy king turned out to be very effective. Black is up a pawn, but very passive and within a few moves his position becomes indefensible. Without waiting for 28...Re7 29.Qc3 Caruana resigned.

.

.

.

.

.

Giri's compatriot Ivan Sokolov had a tougher nut to crack playing Black versus Sergey Karjakin. The Dutchman tried to keep a strategically inferior position together with all his might, but it collapsed when his queen was trapped with 32.Bc2!.

.

.

.

.

The remaining two Dutchmen were pushed to the limit in an endgame in today's round. Where Erwin l'Ami eventually managed to save his skin against Pentala Harikrishna, Loek van Wely succumbed to the pressure in a rook endgame against Peter Leko.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Group A Standings After 11 Rounds

.

In Group B no fewer than six players are still in the running for first place. Sergey Movsesian drew with black against Jan Smeets, thus allowing Arkadij Naiditsch to join him in the lead. The German Grandmaster beat Richard Rapport, who is now in 3rd place with Smeets and Danill Dubov.

.

.

With 6½ out of 10, Jan Timman still has a theoretical chance after beating Predrag Nikolic.

.

.

Group B Round 11 Results

.

Group B Standings After 11 Rounds

.

In Group C Fernando Peralta beat Miguoel Admiraal to catch up with Sabino Brunello, who drew Twan Burg. They are now leading with 9 out of 11.

.

.

Group C Round 11 Results

.

Group C Standings After 11 Rounds

.

Photos from the official website. Videos by Freshmen media. Games via TWIC.