Altibox Norway R3: More draws

Altibox Norway Chess has in only a matter of a few years grown to be one of the world’s biggest chess tournaments. Altibox Norway Chess has proven from the start to be a world-class event and is celebrating its 5th anniversary in 2017. This super-tournament had the aim of inviting the ten strongest chess players in the World, and they proclaim themselves as the strongest tournament in the World.

The events began with a 3+2 blitz tournament, won by Magnus Carlsen, to determine the pairing order.

The time control is 100 min for 40 moves + 50 min for 20 moves, + 15 min for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move 61. The prize fund for the main event is 249,000 euros.

Round three

All Photos by Lennart Ootes for the Official Website

Five draws make the tournament seem rather dull, and truly it hasn't been a shell-shocker of a tournament. The quality of chess continue to be high, though some games were just too technical to be entertaining.

The two games that I would highlight as the most interesting were definitely Aronian-Giri and Carlsen-Nakamura, we start with the World Champion.

Going as far to say that Carlsen's game today was a missed opportunity would be too much, but Nakamura definitely was worse most of the game.

And handshake. Nakamura doesn't add to his bad score against the World Champion.

Giri regretted his kingside expansion

Aronian baited Giri a bit, and the game turned wild

MVL achieved a slightly better position against Caruana, but the American's resilience combined with the reduced material allowed him to draw the game. The fight went on until king vs. king, as there has been some controversy on some of the draws in the tournament as Sofia rules are in place.

Three fighting draws for MVL. Actually, that's true for most people in this tournament.

Anish Giri, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and Fabiano Caruana sharing a joke before the game.

Karjakin's 16.Bh4 was a novelty in the Berlin, stemming from an Andreikin-Jakovenko game of last year. The improvement was obviously analyzed by Anand, who expertly grabbed material only to return it later to simplify into a draw.

Kramnik put enormous pressure on So, and kept pushing in an unpleasant endgame for the black side. So, again, proved to have excellent defensive awareness and made an endgame, which most grandmasters would lose against Kramnik, to be simple.

Big Vlad and his opponent, Wesley, have the same live rating: 2812

Wesley and his mom, Lotis, on the background, with fans getting ready for round three

Replay games of the round

Standings after three rounds

(click image for full size)

Pairings and results of Norway Chess 2017

Links

• Official tournament site
• All Blitz games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.