The 2012 London Chess Classic is taking place in the Olympia Conference Centre from Saturday, December 1st until Monday, December 10th. Games start each day in general at 14:00h London time, except for round four (16:00h) and the final round (12:00h). Time controls are classical forty moves in two hours, then twenty moves in one hour and thirty minutes for the rest of the game. A win is counted as three points, a draw as one, and a loss zero. Tiebreaks: 1) number of wins, 2) number of wins with black, 3) result of the individual game between the tied players. In the unlikely event that there is still a tie then: 4) 2 x 15'+2" games, and if necessary 5) Armageddon game: 6'+2" vs 5'+2" with draw odds for black. If there is a tie involving more than two players then the Rapid games will be conducted as a double round all play all.

Round three

By Alejandro Ramirez

It is unclear what exactly is causing it – it might be the soccer scoring system, it might be the players invited, it might even be that one player has a day off every round and the standings are then not completely clear. Whatever the reason, London has started out with a bang and we have seen three very exciting rounds. Though today for the first time the amount of draws was greater than the amount of decisive games, I don’t believe any spectator was unhappy with the games.

As is traditional, one of the official dignitaries makes the first move to start the round:
in this case, 8-year-old FIDE Candidate Master Joshua Altman (ENG) played 1. Nf3
and whispered, "To avoid Magnus' Grunfeld!"

...Levon Aronian, but was unable to capsize the Armenian vessel.

Aronian – Anand ½-½ : Levon is another player that has had a very rocky start. This game went little better, as his opening was very questionable and basically caused him to be down a pawn from the beginning. However he was at least able to pull himself together and scrape a draw, albeit hardly the way anyone wants to play with White.

...top Brit Michael Adams, who seems intent on being the local hero of the tournament.

Adams – Polgar 1-0: Judit hasn’t been playing her best in this event. She got into problems straight from the start after allowing White to establish a wonderful passed pawn on the d-file. She was never able to recover or cause serious problems and Adams picked up an easy point.

Game of the Day (Adams-Polgar) by Andrew Martin

Hikaru Nakamura was also anxious to bounce back from yesterday's mishap, and
did his utmost to ground down Gawain Jones in the endgame. They drew in the end.

Jones-Nakamura ½ - ½: After White got next to nothing in a Gruenfeld, Nakamura was able to liquidate into a Knight vs. Bishop endgame in which only he had any chances of winning. However Jones showed that he can defend these positions even against the top in the world, and a draw was eventually agreed after much suffering from White.

Vladimir Kramnik came incredibly close to defeating Magnus Carlsen but was not able
to muscle his way in the endgame, despite an extra pawn.

Kramnik-Carlsen ½ - ½: Of course this is the spectator’s game of choice – the tournament leaders facing each other! A relatively dull opening allowed Kramnik to gain some pressure against an isolated b-pawn, which eventually fell. However the victory was still not in sight as there were no passed pawns or any clear targets, and the simplification of the queenside pawns didn’t help White any. It’s hard to pinpoint where Kramnik missed a better chance to create problems.  Maybe 28. Rc1 instead of 28. e4? Carlsen suffered, but the draw was held.

Local fan Trevor Jones is rejoined by one of his heros, Vladimir Kramnik

Replay all the games of the round

Standings (London scoring)

Standings (traditional scoring)

Pictures by Ray Morris-Hill, Pascal Simon and Jeroen van den Belt for ChessBase

Daniel King: Highlights of round three

Pairings and results

The games – except for rounds four and nine – start at 2 p.m. or 14:00h British time = 15:00h CET, 17:00h Moscow, 7:30 p.m. Chennai, 22:00h Beijing, 01:00 a.m. Melbourne, 03:00 a.m. Auckland, 6 a.m. San José, 9 a.m. New York. You can check your location here. Naturally the games will be covered live on the official web site (below) and on Playchess. The games of round four begin two hours later, those of the final round two hours earlier.

Watch the live stream from the London Chess classic here.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN All ChessBase reports on the LCC 2012 (+ 2011, 2010 and 2009) The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client and get immediate access. Or you can get our latest Fritz 13 program, which includes six months free premium membership to Playchess.