Tata Steel 2013 Round 2

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess 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 a selection of rounds.  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).

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Round 2 - Official website report

A Bonanza of draws was the last thing anyone expected a few hours into round 2 of the 75th Tata Steel Chess Tournament, but at the end of a long day, all games in Group A had ended peacefully. Top seed Magnus Carlsen of Norway had a seriously compromised King's Indian against second seed Levon Aronian. The Armenian Olympian had several approaches available to secure his advantage, but instead offered a piece with 18.Nb5!?.

Carlsen thought for a while, but ignored the sacrifice with 18...Bh6, where 18...f4 19.Bxb6 cxb6 20.Nxd6 Rf8 21.c5 would have given White lots of compensation for the minor piece. Nevertheless, Aronian kept the pressure on, but the former child prodigy from Norway showed off his qualities as an escape artist and hung on by the skin of his teeth.

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Of the two leaders, Pentala Harikrishna seemed on his way to a big upset, outplaying 3rd seed Fabiana Caruana with the black pieces. However, the Italian from Florida managed to put up a line of defence just in time and was eventually rewarded with a draw.

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Sergey Karjakin from Russia equalized with black against Dutch Erwin l'Ami, but never had chances for more.

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Meanwhile the other three Dutchmen seemed well on their way to promising positions. Young Anish Giri was directing all his pieces to Viswanathan Anand's king, sacrificing a knight with 22.Nf5, but with his “super knight on e6” (Anand) Black was never in any danger. In fact, it was White who had to be careful not to lose the game on the other side of the board. Giri was not looking forward to a repeat of yesterday and got away with a draw when Anand missed the best opportunity.

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Much more promising was Loek van Wely's handling of the white side of a Sicilian Dragon. After recovering from the Dutchman's rather surprising opening move, it soon became clear to China's Hou Yifan that there was an afternoon of suffering in store for her. However, she defended with determination and after Van Wely had missed several better or even winning continuations, the former Women's World Champion caught her opponent's pieces completely off guard.

In a last ditch effort, Van Wely bluffed his way out in time trouble with 57.c5!? with the idea 57...a2 58.c6 a1Q? 59.c7 and Black has to allow a draw with 59...Rc3. What both players had missed was that Black wins after 58...Qf7, for example 59.c7 a1Q 60.c8Q Qf4! and White gets checkmated.
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Whereas Van Wely was in high spirits after his game, countryman Ivan Sokolov could only utter the words “I was completely winning. If I don't kill myself tonight, I will live for a thousand years” before walking away in disgust from his drawn game with Hikaru Nakamura.

The Bosnian Dutchman could have produced an absolute gem had he continued in style with the beautiful 23...Qc6 24.Kg1 Nd4! 25.Qd1 Rh5! 26.Rb1 Rxh2 27.Rb8 Kg7 28.Nf5 Kf6 with a winning attack. However, Sokolov's more prosaic approach spoiled nothing, the ending was still completely winning. But somehow the Bosnian managed to gradually drift into a drawn position.

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Finally, Peter Leko neutralized Wang Hao's edge with some precise moves. Just as the players were readying themselves to shake hands, the Chinese grandmaster blundered a pawn. To the surprise of both players, it was precisely this 'blunder' that led to a forced repetition of moves and the already expected result.

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In Grandmaster Group B Holland's Sergey Tiviakov continued his great form from United Arab Emirates where he led the Dutch team to a resounding victory. Top seed Arkadij Naiditsch was overly optimistic and was punished for it with a crushing mating attack along the h1-a8 diagonal.

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B Group Round 2 Results

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In Group C Sabino Brunello of Italy and Fernando Peralta of Argentina still have a 100% score. The Argentinian final push began with a curious sequence of f-pawn moves.

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C Group Round 2 Results

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