London R02: All games drawn!

The 7th London Chess Classic, England's premier tournament, takes place at its traditional venue of Kensington Olympia from Friday December 4th to Sunday December 13th. The main event, the strongest ever held in the UK, is a nine-round ten-player super tournament played at a rate of 40 moves in 2 hours, followed by the rest of the game in one hour with a 30-second increment from move 41. The overall prize fund is $300,000, with the winner getting $75,000.

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15-minute summary of round two by Daniel King

London Chess Classic Round Two: All games drawn!

Report from London by Sagar Shah

Today the FIDE Open at the London Chess festival, in which I am participating, had two rounds. Usually when you have to play a double round in a normal event you wonder about what is to be done in the break between the two games. But at the London Chess Classic this was not at all a problem. As soon as my game finished, I rushed to the auditorium where the second round of the elite category was just about to begin.

Before the start of the game: Anish in a snazzy shirt, blazer and tie, and Anand in his informal avatar

A loss yesterday didn’t seem to deter Veselin, who came to the second game in good spirits

A few minutes into the game and the players had already started kibitzing

All of us, at some point or the other, have followed live games on the Internet. The excellent video coverage provided by elite events like Shamkir, Norway, London, etc. ensures that you get a near-to-being-present feeling at the venue. However, it is completely different to be seated in the auditorium and to witness the drama unfold in real life right in front of your eyes.

The game which everyone was looking forward to was definitely Carlsen against Caruana

Magnus played the relatively toothless 5.Re1 in the Berlin. But the game soon reached an exciting position, one where Caruana had to deal with the dangerous white passed pawn on d6. He managed to hold on to a draw, but only by a whisker.

Magnus put some pressure on his opponent…

…but “Fabi” was up to the task!

Overnight leader Anish Giri was playing quickly and moving around confidently on the stage…

…but England’s Michael Adams gave him absolutely no winning chances

Veselin Topalov went on the scoreboard with a draw against Alexander Grischuk

A draw with black was not a bad result for Grischuk who found the nice Qb8-b4 maneuver

For a brief while Anand was under pressure against Levon Aronian,
but after an inaccuracy by the Armenian the game ended in a draw

Aronian would have wanted to test Anand more with the position he had achieved out of the opening, but Re1 made the Indian player’s task quite easy. By the way do you see something unusual in the picture?

The hand with the red nail polish is, of course, not Aronian’s! It belongs to
Jennifer Shahade who is doing a commendable job of interviewing of all the elite players

The game of the day was surely the one between Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Nakamura’s unusual opening experiment fared pretty badly as he came out of the first phase with an inferior position, that too with the white pieces. Maxime played excellently and at one point had a clear win. However, he couldn’t find the critical continuation and the game petered out to equality.

Nakamura had a grim day at the office, but he hung in there

I was sooo close to winning, I just don’t know where I went wrong!

Game of the Day Round two Veselin Topalov against Anish Giri was nominated game of the day for round one by readers and visitors. The lucky winner of the London Chess Classic poll is Lee Phillips. He wins a copy of Fritz 15 DVD, which will be delivered to him.

British Knockout Championships

We had a decisive result in the second game of the British Knockout Championships final between David Howell and Nick Pert. The game started with an English Opening that looked highly drawish. No pawns were exchanged until move 19, and by move 24 the players had reached a completely equal rook ending with seven pawns each. Well, the position was equal, not drawn. The finalists fought hard in the endgame trying to make use of every little resource available in the position. There were some nice themes of mutual zugzwang. Finally, Pert made a few errors and Howell scored the full point. He leads the match with a score of 1.5:0.5.

David Howell came in a fighting mood

The game seemed to be hardly interesting out of the opening...

... but full credit to both the players for not agreeing to a draw and fighting right to the bitter end

FIDE Open

There were two rounds at the FIDE open today. After three games ten players are in joint lead with 3.0/3. Top seed Evegeny Postny of Israel scored two fine victories and so did Eric Hansen of Canada. A few of the higher rated players who aren’t playing up to par are Tigran Gharamiyan, Edouard Romain, Sergey Grigoriants and Rinat Jumabayev – all of them are on 2.0/3.

Oh my god, 1.c4. I cannot play the Modern Tiger!

On 3.0/3 is Canada’s Eric Hansen

England’s leading female player Jovanka Houska is on 2.0/3

Some players, like the aggressive GM Simon Williams, sport a ponytail...

…while others do the same with a beard!

Top standings after round three

Full results and standings here

Editorial note: IM Sagar Shah, who is writing these reports and at the same time playing the open section, has with gratuitous modesty neglected to mention that he too is on 3.0/3. He beat Andrew Harley (2226) and Vuilleumier Alexandre (2342) in rounds 2 and 3. He is on track to complete his third GM norm.

Before coming to London, Sagar spent a week at the ChessBase office in Hamburg, where his first DVD Learn from the Classics was released.

Photos by Amruta Mokal of ChessBase India

Schedule of the London Chess Classic 2015

Live commentary on Playchess

Links Official tournament site Download all games in PGN The games are being 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 there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.