Khanty Rd3: Caruana beats Tomashevsky

The fourth and final stage of the 2014-2015 Grand Prix Series. This tournament is specially important as it will determine the winner and runner up of this year, both of which will automatically qualify for the 2015 Candidates Tournament - the winner of that will challenge Magnus Carlsen to the World Championship Matcch! The tournament is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Ugra, Russia from May 13 to May 27.

Round Three

Ready for action - round three underway

Jobava, Baadur ½-½ Gelfand, Boris
Had this game been played online, I would have attributed 6.Qa3 to a mouse slip, as the usual move is 6.Qb3 (played hundreds of times as opposed to 6.Qa3 - zero). Jobava's pawn sacrifice gave him some initiative on the kingside, and he really was hoping it would be enough. Black's passed protected pawn on c3 gave him a strong advantage if the kingside attack failed. Gelfand was perhaps a little careless with 16...Nd7?! instead of h5. He sacrificed a piece to get out of trouble and the two pawns were enough compensation for the missing material, but not more than that.

The start of a very complicated game

Quick! Someone tell Jobava that queen is supposed to go to b3!

Grischuk, Alexander ½-½ Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
Grischuk tried to steamroll MVL's Sicilian with the early 5.f3!?. This did not work, however, and Black obtained an acceptable position. He made a mistake and allowed Grischuk some pressure, but with the opposite colored bishops it never seemed as if MVL was ever in any real danger.

It's hard to surprise the Frenchman

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Tomashevsky, Evgeny

Complicated play earned Caruana his first win of the event. A big blow for Tomashevsky!

Caruana ties for first place with Svidler and Dominguez after this win

Ouch! This one hurt!

Jakovenko, Dmitry 0-1 Svidler, Peter
Jakoveno obtained almost nothing from the exchange Spanish, and Svidler was well prepared with 5...Qf6. Black's interesting Rd4-a4!? maneuver was not easy to deal with over the board. Jakovenko lost a pawn and found himself suffering in an endgame, ultimately he was unable to hold the rook finale.

A nice win for Svidler who joins the leaders

Karjakin, Sergey ½-½ Dominguez, Leinier
In the King's Indian Attack, if White doesn't sacrifice anything on the kingside he has no way of creating an advantage. Dominguez placed all of his pieces in such a way that any sacrifice was basically impossible. The simplifications and opening of the queenside slowly favored Black, but not by much. The final position is given as clear black advantage by the engines, but to human eyes (at least mine) it looks like the position is close to equal, maybe a very slight edge for Black.

Ultra, ultra solid

Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ Giri, Anish
Nakamura tried to surprise Giri with some kind of early opening gambit, but it did not work that well. Giri gave back his two pawn advantage to equalize in development and the resulting endgame was easily drawn.

Confidently giving away two pawns!

But Giri didn't want them

Standings

Round Three Games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Photos from the official website by Kirill Merkurev

Schedule

Links Official tournament site Download 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 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.