The last time Aronian beat Carlsen in a classical game was in 2009. Since then Carlsen won 5 games and today he made it 6.

There is a certain feel of despondency surrounding Aronian after the last two Candidates tournaments. After the last one he really started to play badly and even fell below 2800 and lost the second place in the world rankings. Today’s game was also a bleak affair for him, as Carlsen simply steamrolled him.

After the verbal altercations at their press conference in Tashkent, the duels between Giri and Jobava will have a special flair. Today’s game was marred by a bad blunder by Jobava, who still cannot find his stride in this tournament. Like I’ve said before, I think this is due to his over-optimism and insistence on originality while neglecting objectivity.

The leaders Ding Liren and Ivanchuk were the first to finish and it was surprising Ding Liren accepted a threefold repetition in the end – his position was safe and he could play on without any risk. Perhaps he just wanted to draw before the game and when he saw a chance didn’t hesitate to take it.

The triple-named Frenchman (Vachier) didn’t show anything against van Wely’s Scheveningen and was quickly worse. He was lucky he could simplify to a position where all the pawns were on the kingside and draw.

A second win in the Dutch for the Polish player and Anand’s second Wojtaszek. His first win in the Dutch was against world’s number 1 and today he beat world’s number 2, Caruana. It seems Caruana thought it a good idea to repeat an opening in which his opponent beat the World Champion a few days ago. Surely he had his reasons, but as the game went it was clear that black had zero chances to win and quite a lot of chances to suffer. Which he did. I have never understood this popularity of the Dutch, white has so many ways to combat it and most of these ways are good, and more importantly, very solid.

So and Hou Yifan played an exciting Ragozin where at first it seemed white was better, then black and then white again. Eventually it was drawn. Probably a disappointment for both, but more for So, who got his preparation in but couldn’t make it count. If So wants to establish himself firmly as a world champion candidate, he must score against lower rated opponents on a constant basis.

Saric lost against Radjabov in the Spanish with 4 d3, in a position which seemed rather simple he made an inaccuracy which let the initiative to black.

Instead of 17 cb ab 18 a4, Saric went 17 a4?! and after 17…bc it was easier to attack white’s weak pawns

After 5 rounds Ivanchuk still leads with 4/5 and in shared second we have Ding Liren and Wojtaszek. The sharks are on shared 4th – Carlsen and Caruana (who meet tomorrow) together with So and Giri. I don’t expect much of tomorrow’s derby – Caruana didn’t play well today, while Carlsen did, so I reckon he will play something solid and aim not to lose. Perhaps a Berlin endgame?

Ivanchuk strikes again! 3/3 with white is an amazing feat, today he beat the Frenchman who was surprised by Ivanchuk’s very rare 15 a4 (15 Nd5 is usual) in the Najdorf and didn’t react very well. It’s good to see Ivanchuk leading the tournament, as for him, more than anyone else, positive emotions and convincing results are needed like air so that he can continue to play well. Much has been said about his (in)stability, and it is true that one loss might derail him completely, but for the time being he’s leading and let’s just enjoy the look at the standings.

Like I wrote yesterday, it’s easy to be original and play badly. That is happening to Jobava right now. He continued in his original style against Saric and while he was playing well he got a big advantage. But then he pushed too hard with the originality while forgetting objectivity and was duly punished.

17 Ke3? just pushing too far (17 f4 or 17 h4 was normal and good)

It’s strange to see Radjabov playing the KID with white. It takes a Chinese to try the KID against Radjabov and after surviving several unpleasant moments Ding Liren did emerge victorious! It’s worth noting that Radjabov employed the ever-popular Makagonov line against his favourite opening (5 Nf3 and 6 h3).

29 Qh6? the decisive mistake

After 29…Rb8 all black’s pieces attacked white’s king. The only way was to play 29 Qh5 and then Nf4, trying to exchange queens.

Decent people pay at least twice for their missed opportunities. I don’t know him personally, but van Wely seems like a decent guy. He paid yesterday for his missed wins against Wojtaszek in round 2, when he lost badly to Ivanchuk and he was doomed today even though he had white against Carlsen. He even tried to curb his usual aggressive instincts and played a “drawish line” (his own words) but to no avail. As for Carlsen, it seems yesterday’s loss shook him and brought him back to his senses – he got rid of the experiments in the opening and played a good game, using van Wely’s mistakes with his usual precision.

The remaining 3 games were drawn. Giri didn’t want to create much with black against Hou Yifan’s solid Guioco Piano, but I find it strange as all the moves in that game were the comp’s first choices. I’m sure Giri had it all prepared beforehand and in fact the most intriguing moment of the game was in this position when Giri spent 25 minutes on his move:

To play (11…Rf3) or to draw (11…Bf5)?

Giri’s choice perhaps confirmed Carlsen’s remark from before the tournament.

Caruana and So played a balanced Spanish which after correct play by both sides led to a draw. Worth noticing is So’s early novelty in a well-known position:

9…Nb8!? The Breyer maneuver hasn’t been tried before here

Aronian tried to squeeze water from stone against Wojtaszek, but he wasn’t successful. I found his opening choice too sterile, but perhaps he was afraid of running into some Anand preparation (Wojtaszek is an Anand second of many years).

Tomorrow’s the first rest day and then the participants play round 5 in Rotterdam, bringing back the memories of the famous AVRO from 1938 when the participants played almost every round in a different place. Not very good for concentration and preparation, but let’s see how these changes affect the players of the 21st century.

When the World Champion loses a game it is always a sensation. Carlsen lost in a very similar way he was losing games at the Olympiad – he pushed too hard and lost objectivity along the way. First a highly provocative opening and then bad play, a recipe for disaster.

Wojtaszek didn’t have to do anything special to win, he only had to keep cool and collect what was offered. Carlsen’s blunder of 28..Qe6 came in an already bad position. I can understand Carlsen’s desire to experiment in the openings and play adventurous chess, especially now as he’s safe with his title for two more years, but loss of objectivity and bad play will lead him nowhere. Or, as Tarrasch said: It is not enough to be a good player, one must also play well.

28…Qe6? 29 g4, winning the bishop

The over-ambitious and too-original bug also got another victim today – Jobava. Today’s game against Ding Liren is a clear example of what happens to original players like Jobava when they don’t play well and still insist on playing in the same style – they lose very badly in about 20 moves. This loss was almost identical to his loss to Mamedyarov at the Olympiad, compare the games in the notes.

Another game that was decided by a one-move blunder was So-Aronian. In a very interesting and complex position with mutual chances Aronian lost a piece. This usually doesn’t happen to these people, so it’s difficult to explain it.

20…Ng8?? 21 Bh5, game over

Van Wely got what he deserved after yesterday’s missed wins. He got swarmed over by Ivanchuk in a Sicilian that quickly became winning for white. My life-long experience with both colours in the Sicilian tells me that black is worse already by move 10, his set-up with Bd7 and Rc8 is way too slow. The final position shows the pleasant sadistic feelings that Ivanchuk must have enjoyed.

Black resigned.

The Frenchman (Vachier) and Radjabov followed in the footsteps of Leko and Kramnik in a popular line of the QGD with 5 Bf4. It was interesting to see that after playing quickly for 23 moves, the Frenchman played his novelty 23 h4 after which Radjabov thought for some time and replied with the human move 23..a4, fixing the pawn on a3, which my comp mentions only at depth 33 as a second choice. This resulted in 26 minutes of thought by the Frenchman, a clear sign of either too shallow preparation or too weak hardware. This was the only interesting moment in the game, as it was predestinied to draw, such is the character of the line chosen.

Saric and Hou Yifan were obviously shaken by their losses and this resulted in a wobbly game. Hou was winning, after the very bad 16 a4 by Saric (16 Bd3 instead is much better), but after mutual mistakes the game ended in a draw.

16 a4? Bc3 and black is practically winning

Chuchelov’s students, former (Giri) and present (Caruana) slugged it out in another QGD with 5 Bf4, with Caruana playing his preferred move 7…Ne4. Giri improved on Anand’s play on move 10, but it didn’t seem like something big, as black was OK. After the double-edged exchange sacrifice by Caruana (which wasn’t forced) Giri had all the chances but Caruana defended well and could draw by perpetual. And here comes the most instructive moment – when after a long defence he realised he wasn’t in any danger of losing anymore, Caruana decided not to take the draw and play on! This kind of keen sense of the dynamics in the position and in the players’ heads is a rare gift and Karpov comes to mind immediately, as he was famous of momentarily switching to playing for a win the moment his hard defence brought him an equal position. Giri was on the defensive but up to the task and the game was eventually drawn after 97 moves.

After three rounds we have Caruana and Ivanchuk on 2.5/3 and Carlsen, Aronian, van Wely and Saric on 1/3. It promises to be an exciting tournament as the favourites now have to go through the field and play catch-up!

Two winners in the second round in Wijk – Caruana won his second game, against Kasparov’s compatriot Saric, while Ding Liren beat his own compatriot Hou Yifan. The other games were drawn, with more or less excitement.

Caruana and Saric played the slightly forgotten nowadays Zaitsev Variation in the Spanish with Saric repeating the rare 14…a5 which he has played before. It is always dangerous to repeat lines you have played before, especially against people who prepare well. Caruana is one of them and he did show his preparation, but black still had a good game. The game was tense and balanced, but on move 28 we can see what a difference in class means: the higher the class of a player, the longer he can play high-quality moves in tense situations. In other words, world class players rarely crack, and almost never when playing against non-world class players. Saric showed that he can play on equal terms for the good part of the middlegame, but he couldn’t withstand the tension and cracked:

Hou Yifan’s opening choice was strange – in the Panov Caro Kann she entered an endgame a pawn down where the maximum white could hope was to recuperate the material and draw. Surely there are better ways to play for a draw with white! As it happened, she missed these opportunities and Ding Liren returned the material only when he achieved positional advantage in return. Then he went on to win without much trouble.

Aronian and Giri played a topical Grunfeld line which Aronian himself defended with black quite recently – against Radjabov in Beijing in a rapid game. Giri obviously improved on that game, but it has all been played before – only black’s 23rd move was new.

Carlsen didn’t get anything out of the opening (a Rubinstein Nimzo-Indian) against his former second So. In his own words he felt “outplayed” by So in the middlegame and had to look for an opportunity to draw, which he found easily.

Jobava and Vachier played a theoretical draw in the Classical Dragon, nothing much to add there.

Radjabov and Ivanchuk played a correct game, while van Wely was winning against Wojtaszek, but he somehow managed to miss 3 relatively easy wins after the time control:

The first super tournament of the year is upon us and the excitement started even before the first round. Yesterday the World Champion made a cocky statement calling Giri a “coward” and explaining this that if Giri doesn’t get anything from the opening then he plays for a draw. Needless to say that the first round pairing of Giri-Carlsen promised a lot of action, if nothing else then at least an ego-driven reaction by Giri! However, the game showed that Carlsen was 100% right – Giri got nothing from the opening and played for a draw. Perhaps these young guys have no pride and self-respect?!

Ivanchuk beat Jobava after an inexplicable blunder by the latter on move 42. I somehow get the impression that this was a result of Jobava’s over-confidence: he managed to play a a good game against Ivanchuk implementing a rare idea in the Labourdonnais Sicilian (6…g6) and never felt inferior. Then he played a careless move that cost him the game:

Radjabov introduced a new way (or, rather, discovered the condemned way was possible) to play against the Pirc in his game against van Wely. I have always thought that the early 6 d5 (instead of the usual 6 dc5) gave black an easy play, but apparently things aren’t that simple.

6 d5!? gave white some initiative

It seems Radjabov missed some chances later on in the game and the eternal Dutchman in Wijk managed to draw.

The triple-named Frenchman (Maxime Vachier Lagrave) beat Hou Yifan in a game that was highly tactical and I got the impression that he was always controlling the situation better.

Ding Liren and Caruana played an interesting Grunfeld that was balanced until the Chinese went one step too far with preparatory measures.

Saric played calmly and drew with Aronian and he must be glad to start the tournament with a draw with one of the favourites.

So and Wojtaszek, both highly theoretical players, the latter being Anand’s second for many years now, drew a highly theoretical game in the Najdorf. I’m curious to see how So will do in this tournament, after rising to number 10 in the world – is he there to stay or just an accidental tourist? I tend to incline towards the former, but let’s see.

Switching laptops is always a bothersome task. Transfering data, uninstalling stuff from the old laptop, installing stuff on the new one, fine-tuning the new one with the set-up you’ve established it works best, but forgotten how exactly to do it… Anyway, I’m writing this on my old one (still), but I should be functional with the new one soon enough.

The switch is also time-consuming, so I didn’t really have the time to comment on the Classic. I’ll take a look at some moments that I found interesting below. The fact that Anand won is very surprising, but only because the peculiar tie-break system gave him the black-wins odds. Anand didn’t show any superiority and he played in his usual energy-saving mode, using his fantastic preparation to stay out of trouble, both with black and white. In fact, he won the tournament thanks to Adams’ collapse. Adams won the first game in impressive style, but then got into opening trouble against Giri and Nakamura and lost both. In the last round against Anand he made some inexplicable mistakes to lose from a drawn position.

Kramnik played exciting chess, he busted Nakamura thanks to his superior opening preparation and showed interesting and high-quality opening ideas against Adams (14…Bc4 in the Berlin) and Giri (11…c6 in the Catalan). Giri is thriving lately, while his girlfriend’s chess suffers (easy to guess which way the energy is going in this relationship) and Nakamura is stagnating. Caruana couldn’t come back after his first-round loss and I think he’s still getting used to the new level and expectations.

Adams-Kramnik, 14…Bc4!? instead of the usual 14…Rg6

Giri-Kramnik, 11…c6!?, a rare move

The tournament was interesting to follow, as it always is for a professional to watch the best players play against each other, but I wonder whether this over-saturation of elite events leads somewhere. If you take into account that starting with the Olympiad in August there was non-stop top-level chess going on (Sinquefield cup, the Grand Prix tournaments, the ECC, Bilbao, the WCh match in Sochi) while on the other hand the open tournaments are getting thinner by the day in every possible aspect (prize-fund, conditions for titled players, number of days) it seems that the non-elite players are slowly being forced out of active play and reduced to the role of observers. It’s fun to observe, of course, but playing still has some exciting moments…

I like the name of the tournament, although except for the time control I see nothing classic in it. Five rounds is really too short, mixing up amateurs and elite sounds like fun and playing rapid, blitz and long chess in a few days – none of this qualifies as classic.

Today the classical part of the Classic began and the game of the day undoubtedly was Adams’ win over Caruana. It reminded me of the famous Kasparov wins against Karpov: game 16 of the 1986 match in Leningrad and game 20 of the 1990 match in Lyon. The harmonious attack of the white’s pieces and the key Kh2 move are taken from Kasparov’s notebook!

The other interesting game (but only for serious professionals) was the duel of the ex-World Champions. Anand played the Triangle, he first used this move order in game 5 in Chennai last year. After Kramnik’s 4 Nf3 (Carlsen played 4 e4) Anand avoided the Noteboom (4…dc4) and went for the usual Semi-Slav 4…Nf6, but the real surprise came on the next move when he went for the ultra-sharp and heavily analysed Botvinnik line. It’s obvious he prepared this for Carlsen, most probably last year for Chennai, but he never got the chance to play it. And then it started – they followed theory. And followed it, followed it, and then some more. Try to remain calm when I inform you that the new move was on move 42, in a dead-drawn rook endgame, with peace signed on move 45. Incredibly deep preparation by both and exciting for the professionals to find out Anand’s intended black repertoire for his last two matches.

The third game, Nakamura-Giri was a draw and that’s all that can be said about it.

I first noticed Igor Lysyj after seeing the game analysed below. It was a convincing win for white in the Makagonov KID where it seemed that black played all the normal KID moves and yet lost badly.

Then his books on the Berlin Defence and 1…e5 black repertoire came out. I remember reading his story how he came about to creating his black repertoire based on 1…e5 and the Berlin after suffering for several years with the French Defence.

This year’s Russian Superfinal witnessed his finest hour – Lysyj won clear first with 5.5/9, with 4 wins, 2 losses and 3 draws, half a point ahead of Jakovenko, who only beat him and drew the rest!

What I found surprising were the lousy scores of Karjakin and Svidler – Karjakin shared last place witn 4/9 while Svidler managed to crawl back to 50% with a last round win over Zvjaginsev. I somehow have the feeling that the constant talking while commenting on the World Championship match in Sochi served Svidler badly – when the mouth moves too much it gives no chance to the brain to start working. Svidler’s comments were excellent, but his play left much to be desired. As for Karjakin, perhaps buying his wife a big jeep before the tournament wasn’t the best possible psychological preparation?!

I expected Kramnik to draw easily today, but instead he lost easily to the Chinese Olympiad hero (Yu, who is 20 years old, won gold on Board 3 in Tromso with the highest performance rating in the whole Olympiad).

It was a very strange game by Kramnik, I’ve never seen him make so many weakening moves and ending up lost in 20 moves! I know Kramnik (and not only him!) hates playing in the mornings (I for example have horrible results in my morning games) but the last round started at noon, not the worst of times.

So it’s difficult to explain Kramnik’s play, but all credit should go to Yu Yangyi who ended the tournament with 3/3, beating Giri and Kramnik, the number 1 and 2 seeds in the last 2 rounds (in Round 7 he beat GM Lenderman)! I’ve written in an earlier post, How to Win Opens (read it in full here), the crucial thing in open tournaments is always a good finish, and Yu had the perfect finish.

Here’s his final-round win against Kramnik:

A very instructive game played by Kramnik today in Round 8 at the Qatar Masters. Faithful to his usual openings Kramnik equalised easily against Salem and the game appeared to be a dead draw. But only one odd move was necessary so Kramnik could do a Rubinstein! I’m referring here to the famous pawn endgame Cohn-Rubinstein from St. Peterburg 1909:

25…Kf6-g5-h4-h3!

Kramnik’s maneuver was no less impressive. Here’s the game with comments:

I found it curious that Kramnik didn’t change his repertoire to play in an open event. He slugged it out in the dull Berlin with 5 Re1 against Debashis (2485) for 81 moves and things didn’t work out against the below-2500 guys in the first rounds. Obviously these guys are so far from Kramnik’s world that they didn’t care what happens in that one game and played bravely and didn’t deserve to lose. Which cannot be said for the likes of Vovk (2640) who played cowardly or Sjugirov (2673) who played shamefully. These guys are a bit closer to Kramnik’s sphere and they know who Kramnik is and what Kramnik means – they were afraid, showed too much respect and lost without a fight. Hence, the irrelevance of Kramnik’s openings.

Kramnik is now on course to win the tournament, being the sole leader with 7/8 before the last round. I’m sure this tournament will serve as proof for those who state the elite are way too strong for the “common” GMs and that’s why they don’t play opens.