Zurich 03: "Freak Occurrence"

The «Zurich Chess Challenge 2014» will be the first encounter between the newly crowned World Champion, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, and the former title holder, India’s Viswanathan Anand after their recent match in Chennai. From Wednesday, 29 January to Tuesday, 4 February 2014, they will compete in the 3rd Zurich Chess Challenge along with four other great chess stars: Levon Aronian (Armenia), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Fabiano Caruana (Italy) and Boris Gelfand (Israel).

Round Three

Without a shadow of a doubt, the game of the day was between Nakamura and Carlsen, so we will save that one for last.

Gelfand has no problems holding Aronian to a draw in today's game. He employed the rock solid c6-d5 system against the Fianchetto Grunfeld and he obtained a slightly worse position, but just one inaccuracy by the Armenian meant that Gelfand had the opportunity to fully equalize and he took it. The draw was not very eventful and it was not very long, so a rapid game was played.

The rapid was far more interesting, Aronian sacrificed a piece for the intiative and obtained a pleasant position. Gelfand didn't defend well and his position collapsed quickly. Here is the rapid game:

Aronian couldn't force anything in the normal game but in the rapid he went crazy!

Caruana-Anand was only marginally more interesting. The Italian had some chances to maybe get an initaitive thanks to Anand's strange and passive 16...Nf8?! However he returned the favor by playing 19.Bxf4 instead of the more aggressive 19.Nxf4 keeping the pair of bishops, which would have promised him the chance to activate thetm in an open position. With the opposited colored bishops on the board Anand correctly sacrificed a pawn to quell the opponent's initiative and to start one of his own.

Caruana probably wanted to cause more problems than he did in today's game

Caruana saw no reason to go into such complications, returned the pawn and the game was soon drawn afterwards in a position in which Black had no danger at all of being worse, but it's unlikely he could have pushed much further.

A solid draw is a good step in the right direction for Anand

Nakamura started the game fantastically, and then one of the strangest things in chess history happened. Take a look:

Daniel Kings shows the game Nakamura vs Carlsen

There are simply no words to describe what happened. It would have been Nakamura's first win against Carlsen in classical chess and it was close to being a complete domination. Nakamura played better, understood the position better, and yet when it came to giving the final blow he blanked out and he even lost the game.

The game was seen with intensity by grandmasters and spectators all over the world. Today the Playchess server had almost 9000 users connected simultaneously - most of them watching the Nakamura-Carlsen game! Carlsen remarked after the game that he was sure there were multiple ways of winning, but as long as material was equal and nothing immediate was hanging all he could do was play moves and hope to get lucky. He also pointed out that Nakamura doesn't usually get these kinds of chances against him.

He dominated his opponent, buut one bad move is all it takes in chess...

Carlsen used one of his nine lives today. Maybe one of his one thousand lives....

The sponsors of the event, Oleg and Natalia Skvortsov, enjoyed the game until the very end

Peter Heine Nielsen and Henrik Carlsen interviewed after what must have been a torturous session

Replay round three games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Cristian Chirila - Guest Commentator Former World u-16 Champion and currently a grandmaster finishing his studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Cristian is an ambitious chess player. Find out more about Cristian, including his chess lesson services, biography and games here.

Maria Emelianova - Photographer Maria Emelianova is 26 years old, born in Ekaterinburg, Russia, Women FIDE Master, with a 2113 Elo rating. After finishing school Maria moved to Moscow to study at the university, so chess was forgotten for some time. She worked for about a year with Alexander Roshal in the chess magazine "64". Her carrier as a chess photographer started at the Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk. "It was just a hobby, but somehow became an interesting job," says Maria, who works with a Canon 1DX. "Now I am finishing my studies at two universities in Moscow, and am looking forward to a future in the big world of chess."

Schedule and Pairings

The event is a six player round robin, with a rate of play of 40 moves in 120 minutes, then 20 moves in 60 minutes and the rest of game in 15 minutes, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61. Special rule: in case of a draw before move 40, an additional rapid game will be played (which does not count for the overall result).

• The blitz will be used to determine the colors
• The classical time control gives two points to wins, one for draws and none for losses
• The rapid time control gives one point to wins, half to draws and none for losses

The winner will be the one who scores the most points between the classical tournament and the rapid.

Schedule of Commentary

Schedule and results

Rapid Schedule

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.