Tal 03: A trio of precise wins

The Eighth International Tal Memorial Chess Tournament is being held from June, 13 to 24, 2013, with a rest days on June 16 and June 20. The rounds generally start at 15:00h (=3 p.m.) Moscow time, with the first round starting at 6 p.m. and the final round at 1 p.m. Accommodation is in the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow, Tverskaya str. 3, while the event takes place in the in New Technologies Center Digital October, in Moscow. The tournament has ten invited players and is a round robin with time controls of one hour and 40 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds for each move starting from move one. Full information on special rules, regulation, prize money, etc. can be found in our initial report.

Round three report

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - Vladimir Kramnik ½-½
Kramnik came extremely well prepared in this line of the Nimzo Indian. Mamedyarov simply fell into a long and forcing line that the Russian had prepared and decided to bail out with a perpetual as soon as he had a chance. Mamedyarov was never in any real danger, but he was certainly never better either.

Mamedyarov wasn't prepared against Kramnik's Nimzo Indian nor his tea kettle.

Kramnik used almost no time at all in achieving his draw in today's game.

Gelfand, Boris - Andreikin, Dmitry ½-½
Gelfand's opening with white still remains unconvincing. Andreiking enjoyed full equality shortly after the opening, as Gelfand's pair of bishops was not worth much due to the closed structure of the position and Black's dominance of the open d-file. The players repeated moves in a very level situation.

Andreikin hasn't had any exciting games, but he sits at a very respectable 50% score.

The American proved too difficult for Karjakin today, who has had several recent successes.

Nakamura, Hikaru - Karjakin, Sergey 1-0
Nakamura dominated from beginning to end in this Gruenfeld. He employed the somewhat unusual 5.Bd2 and Karjakin was clearly caught off guard. The Russian's reaction was some what questionable, and although he obtained a solid blockade on White's passed d-pawn, through a series of clever bishop maneuvers Hikaru dominated the e8 square and with it the only open file in the game. Nakamura missed a couple of finishing blows in the endgame, but his technique was still good enough and he wrapped up the game without Karjakin ever having a real chance.

"Hmmm was my game really that good...?"

"Yes, yes it was!" - a cheerful Hikaru Nakamura at the postmortem.

GM Daniel King provides video analysis of Nakamura vs Karjakin 

Anand, Vishy - Morozevich, Alexander 1-0
A very slow and positional Spanish opening was level for a long time. Anand started slowly outplaying Morozevich starting on around move 30, and soon afterwards Morozevich lost his patience with the move 37...f5?! Afterwards Anand played a very precise game, took advantage of his opponent's weaknesses as well as his exposed king and won without too many issues.

Maybe Carlsen should consider bigger bottles of orange juice, as he ran out of energy in the endgame and made an inexplicable blunder.

Carlsen, Magnus - Caruana, Fabiano 0-1
Carlsen's less than stellar opening left him with an equal position which he tried to complicate by sacrificing a pawn in order to leave Black's rook on b5 in a dubious post. Caruana had calculated deeper and saw that he could retain the pawn without any problems. The queen and rook endgame that resulted gave Black the upper hand because of the extra pawn, but was extremely difficult to win due to the blockade on the d-pawn. The game transposed into a known rook endgame which is theoretically drawn. White's demise began with thet almost incomprehensible decision to play 49.Rf8? instead of the more natural 49.Rb8, which would have maintained the pressure on the b-pawn. The endgame with the passed h-pawn was a win for Black since White's king was cut off on the 5th rank, which makes it impossible for him to reach any of the known draw setups. Caruana showed that he knows this endgame perfectly and found some important and precise moves; namely 59...Re4! after which it was all over.

Correction: Magnus Carlsen has informed us that he did not, as we claimed, sacrifice the pawn. He simply blundered it. We apologize for the incorrect interpretation. We tend to forget that this player can blunder anything at all – ed.

The new number three in the live ratings, displacing Vladimir Kramnik: Fabiano Caruana.

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All pictures by Etery Kublashvili

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