Tata Steel Rd8: Carlsen storms into sole lead

The Tata Steel Chess Tournament has two main tournaments. They are played according to the 'round robin' system, whereby each competitor plays in turn against every other during the tournament. The Tata Steel Masters has 14 participants and the Tata Steel Challengers has 14 participants. Both groups start on January 10th 2015 and the last round is on January 25th. All rounds in Wijk aan Zee begin at 13.30 hours, except for the last round on January 25th, which begins at 12.00 hours. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from the first move.

Admission to the playing hall in Wijk aan Zee, Rotterdam and The Hague is free of charge

Round eight - Masters

Daniel King shows the highlights of round 8

Hou Yifan ½-½ Aronian, Levon
The only draw of the day was a long endgame between Hou Yifan and Levon Aronian. The Chinese player simplified into an endgame rather quickly, but she seemed to outplay Aronian step by step. At some point, Hou Yifan had very real pressure on the position, but she had to be incredibly precise in order to not lose her advantage. Aronian was given one opportunity to simplify the situation into a R+N vs. R endgame which Hou Yifan did not bother to try winning.

Ding Liren 1-0 Saric, Ivan
Saric's handling of the Slav left something to be desired. His position was already losing when Ding Liren finished with style:

Ivanchuk, Vassily 0-1 So, Wesley
Ivanchuk fell for some nasty opening preparation:

Good opening prep from the number six player in the World, according to the live ratings

Wesley So explains his surprise that Ivanchuk fell for this preparation, "I saw this in a ChessBase article"

Jobava, Baadur 0-1 Carlsen, Magnus
Jobava's opening choice was, predictably, bizarre. He obtained a fine position at some point, somehow, against Carlsen and was slowly pushing him back. Carlsen fought back and obtained just a slight initiative after Jobava made the mistake of allowing too much activity, and then time trouble claimed its victim on the 40th move:

Carlsen with his fifth (!) victory in a row and now the sole lead of the tournament

Vachier Lagrave, Maxime 1-0 Giri, Anish
MVL very soundly outplayed Giri from a 4.d3 Spanish. After obtaining a small initiative with the pair of bishops MVL cashed it in for an attack on the king that yielded him a winning rook endgame. A nice positional game.

Giri was again outplayed in an anti-berlin by MVL, the previous time it was in Biel last year

Van Wely, Loek 0-1 Caruana, Fabiano
Van Wely had a good position in a hedgehog style structure. Caruana seemed planless until, at one point, Van Wely simply blundered a pawn. There was some compensation for it, but it was not enough. Eventually Caruana converted.

Fabiano Caruana found a free pawn and a point to go with it

Radjabov, Teimour 1-0 Wojtaszek, Radoslaw
Radjabov chose a Najdorf variation that won him a pawn, but gave Wojtaszek some serious compensation. Slowly but surely Radjabov neutralized the enemy initiative, making the game go into an opposite colored bishop endgame that was very, very unpleasant for Wojtaszek. The combination of the passed a-pawn and the weak king was too much for Black to handle.

Replay Masters games

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Masters standings after eight rounds

Round eight - Challengers

The Challengers group saw more draws than usual... two! A big win by Wei Yi puts him at 2688 live rating... at only 15 years of age! However, Navara is keeping pace as he beat Michiels. Timman lost one of the Dutch duels of this tournament against Van Kampen.

Dale lost again and is in last place by a full point,
but still somehow performing above his rating

The Dutch Women's team came to support Anne Haast!
And it worked! A big upset as Haast defeated Gunina.

Potkin is having an alright tournament with 4.5/8, but that is two points less than the leaders

Replay Challengers games

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Challengers standings after eight rounds

Photos by Alina l'Ami for the official website

Schedule and results - Masters group

Schedule and results - Challengers group

Venues

The tournament has a slight change this year. Most of the rounds will be played in the traditional De Moriaan Community Centre in Wijk aan Zee, but two of the rounds will be played elsewhere. Last year the tournament traveled to the National Museum in Amsterdam and the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven.

This year the fifth round will be held in De Rotterdam. De Rotterdam is a building on the Wilhelminapier in Rotterdam, designed by Rem Koolhaas in 1998.

Rotterdam is ready to host Tata Steel!

The tenth round will be played in the International Press Cnetre Niewuspoort in the Hague. Councillor Karsten Klein of The Hague had this to say: "The Hague is honored to be able to host the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2015 at the heart of the Dutch parliamentary democracy. Our city has a long history of international chess tournaments, a tradition which is continued in this manner. "

Commentary on Playchess

This being the first major event of the year, it is clear that we will be bringing you live commentary on our server www.playchess.com!

Links Official tournament site Master Games in PGN Challenger 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.