Beijing Rd10: The bottom half strikes back

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The fifth stage of the FIDE Grand Prix Series is taking place between the 3rd and 17th of July 2013 on the premises of the Chinese Chess Association in Beijing. The time controls are 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move 61 onwards. The games start at 3 p.m. local time, except the last round. The Grand Prix Series consists of six tournaments to be held over two years (2012-2013). 18 top players participate in four of these six tournaments. The winner and second placed player overall of the Grand Prix Series will qualify for the Candidates Tournament to be held in March 2014.

Karjakin, Sergey - Wang Yue ½-½
Karjakin came close to breaking Wang Yue's defenses in this game. The Chinese set up a solid Petroff and readied himself for a tough defense against the Russian star. Karjakin tried to probe every weakness in his opponent's position but Wang Yue kept his resilience and at the end Karjakin ran out of pieces to attack with, and the game ended in a draw.

Leko, Peter - Wang Hao ½-½
Leko tried to obtain an opening advantage by using the exchange Slav, but he was unable to do so and the game quickly.

Kamsky, Gata - Ivanchuk, Vassily 1-0
Kamsky did not obtain a comfortable position out of the opening, but managed to outplay his opponent and even trick him in time trouble to obtain a decisive advantage. Ivanchuk resigned as he had the uncomfortable choice of trapping his king in with Rg6 after which the doubling of the rooks on the 8th file would have been decisive, or losing the defense on g7 which would have allowed White to double on the 7th rank instead and won the game.

Giri punished Topalov's mistake swiftly.

Giri, Anish - Topalov, Veselin 1-0
Topalov made the strange decision to trap his own bishop by placing it on f5. He did have the choice of exchanging it for White's own light squared bishop, so it is quite unclear why this mistake happened. After this he had no compensation whatsoever for the piece and he resigned a few moves later.

Once again our express analysis comes from GM Alexander Ipatov from Turkey, 
a bungy-jumping adventurer whom you can follow his blog at http://blog.alexipatov.com/.

Topalov has shown brilliancies and elemental blunders this tournament.

Morozevich, Alexander - Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar 1-0
Morozevich's positional pressure proved to be too much for the tournament leader. Slowly but surely White was able to create a minority attack on the queenside once the queens were traded off. Without any counterplay on the kingside Black seemed helpless and planless and Morozevich posted a clean technical win.

Gelfand, Boris - Grischuk, Alexander 1-0
Gelfand successfully showed how to play against the King's Indian Defense. In a perfect technical showing he neutralized Black's initiative, obtained a superior pawn structure, simplified the position into a superior endgame, probed Black's weaknesses and won the game. Text book King's Indian slaying.

Information and pictures by FIDE press chief WGM Anastasiya Karlovich

Standings

Schedule and pairings

Note: Time given is the local round time.

The games start at 9:00h European time, 11:00h Moscow, 3 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here. The commentary on Playchess begins one hour after the start of the games and is free for premium members.

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.