Paris Final: Disappointing Finish

Sixth FIDE Grand Prix - Paris 2013

The sixth and final Grand Prix of the system is taking place at the Chapelle de la Villedieu, founded in 1180 by soldier-monks of the Order of the Temple. The p laying site is considerably west of Paris. The tournament will determine the last qualifiers for the Candidates tournament for the next World Chess Championship cycle. This leg of the series is being played under classical time controls: Time control: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and then each player gets 15 minutes and an increment of 30 seconds per move after the second time control). No draws offers: Sofia rules!

Round 11

With these results the biggest winner from Paris is... Mamedyarov! Since neither Caruana nor Grischuk catch him it is the Azerbaijani that qualifies to the next Candidate's tournament by virtue of his Grand Prix standing:

Caruna would have won 170 points if he had won clean first place in the tournament, but got only 140 since he tied for first. This was of course the difference in surpassing Mamedyarov or not, as it is the top two spots that qualify for the Candidate's (Topalov was already qualified before Paris as his excellent results meant he couldn't be surpassed).

Had Ponomariov lost, Caruana would've gotten second in the Grand Prix, but the Ukrainian had no problem holding Gelfand to a draw

Gelfand, Boris ½-½ Ponomariov, Ruslan
Ponomariov obtained a good position from the Dutch defense but Gelfand still held some positional pluses. The players agreed to do a three fold repetition as early as move 23 in a position where either side could have easily played on.

Bacrot, Etienne ½-½ Grischuk, Alexander
A totally unnecessary repetition starting on move 13 allowed these players to bypass Sophia rules and the game was drawn.

Tomashevsky, Evgeny ½-½ Ivanchuk, Vassily
Tomashevsky avoided the ...a6 Slav by playing without Nc3, a common way of dealing with this set-up as it has been proven that the knight doesn't necessarily want to be in that square too quickly in those kinds of systems. He was able to win a pawn with a long but well calculated combination but surprisingly his advantage was not so strong as his extra pawn was very difficult to convert in a queen endgame. To Tomashevsky's credit he tried very hard but it was simply impossible to win with his weak king position that ultimately allowed Ivanchuk to force a perpetual.

Wang Hao was the player that came closest to winning today, but he spoiled his chances before hitting move 40

Wang Hao ½-½ Fressinet, Laurent
The Chinese player obtained a certain amount of pressure against the queenside with his double rooks on the c-file but Black's strong bishop on b6 held the position easily. Fressinet tried to make the position more exciting by playing 26...e4!? which sacrificed a pawn but the compensation was somewhat questionable. Wang Hao's pair of bishops and extra pawn gave him good chances to win but in time pressure he threw his advantage away and Fressinet was able to salvage a drawn.

Fressinet had a close call as his strange pawn push left him in a nearly lost position

Grandmaster Romain Edouard brings us annotations of today's games:

Dominguez Perez, Leinier ½-½ Caruana, Fabiano

Giri, Anish ½-½ Nakamura, Hikaru

Nakamura had a very good event and is now tied for fourth in the world in the live rating list with Caruana, both at 2789 (after rounding)

Romain Edouard Born in 1990 in Poitiers, France, Romain won the French and European U16 Championships in 2006, came second in the U18 section in European and World Championships in 2007, and was co-champion of France in 2012. He has been a member of the French national team since 2009 (except in 2011). He won several international open tournaments: Bad Wiessee 2008, Zaragoza 2008, Echternach 2009, Andorra 2009, Hastings 2010, Echternach 2010, Clermont-Ferrand 2011, etc. as well as closed tournaments: Grand Prix de Bordeaux 2007, Antwerp 2011, Nancy 2012.

Standings

Statistics

The percentages really speak for themselves...

The FIDE press officer Alin l'Ami provided us with all the information and pictures necessary for the reports

Replay last round games

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Schedule

The games start at 15:00h European time, 17:00h Moscow, 9 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN 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 there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.