Tata Steel 2013 Round 7

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 8 with FM Kostya Kavutskiy & GM Sam Shankland.  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 7 - Official website report

In round 7 of the 75th Tata Steel Chess Tournament World Champion Viswanathan Anand caught up with leader Magnus Carlsen by defeating Loek van Wely. Although the Dutchman achieved an adequate position on the black side of a Scandinavian Defence, his attempt to break free was ill-timed costing him first a pawn and then the game after 23.Qb1, the move Van Wely had missed in his calculations.

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Carlsen was nowhere near a win with Black against Peter Leko, but despite trying for 83 moves, neither was the Hungarian Grandmaster.

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After winning his second game, Hikaru Nakamura is only half a point behind the leaders. The 2010 Tata winner had a difficult pairing on paper, facing his nemesis Wang Hao with Black.  Wang Hao was on plus 4 after just 7 games with Nakamura. However, the past was soon forgotten when the Chinese Grandmaster made a few errors in the opening, allowing the American Grandmaster to seize the initiative. Nakamura won an exchange and had no difficulties with the technical phase.

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The number three in the world, Levon Aronian was poised to win his third game in a row, this time at the cost of Sergey Karjakin. The Russian Grandmaster was completely outplayed in an Anti-Marshall of the Ruy Lopez, but just before the first time control Aronian missed a golden opportunity: instead of 38...Bg4, he should have played 38...Re1!, forcing the white rook to protect the knight after which Black would have had a winning attack with 39...Rh1 40.Kg3 Qf6!. In the game Karjakin's king escaped and Aronian even had to sacrifice an exchange to avoid trouble, with a draw as a result.

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The remaining three games, Hou Yifan-Caruana, l'Ami-Giri and Sokolov-Harikrishna, quickly transposed into equal endgames, resulting in three logical draws.

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Group A Standings After 7 Rounds

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The leader in Group B, Richard Rapport, had no problem fighting off runner up Daniil Dubov's attempt to join the lead and the game was agreed a draw once an equal endgame arose. Sergey Movsesian of Armenia and Germany's Arkadij Naiditsch closed the gap with Rapport by beating the youngsters Robin van Kampen and Alexander Ipatov respectively. Van Kampen's loss was especially striking; trading his dark-squared bishop in a King's Indian he created a weakness that eventually became his downfall: 27...Nd3? 28.Rxd3! cxd3 29.Qh6 d2 30.Ra1! and White will soon checkmate with Qg7.

Sergey Movsesian

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Group B Round 7 Results

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Group B Standings After 7 Rounds

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In Group C Fernando Peralta of Argentina again took the sole lead, defeating Hjorvar Steinn Gretarsson with the black pieces. The International Master from Iceland seemed oblivious to the dangers of his position when he played 21.Nb5. Peralta did not miss 21...Bg4! after which 22.f3 is not possible on account of 22...Nxf3 23.gxf3 Bxf3 with a winning mating attack. Even more devastating is 22.Re1 Nf3! 23.gxf3 Bxf3 24.h3 Rd1 25.Rc2 Qg5 26.Kh2 Bd1!. Gretarsson tried 22.Rd1 instead, but lost an exchange and then the game after 22...Bd7 23.Qa3 Qg5!.

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Group C Round 7 Results

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Group C Standings After 7 Rounds

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