Candidates Rd12: Young guns forge ahead!

The 2016 FIDE World Chess Candidates Tournament is a 14-round event, which determines the next Challenger to Magnus Carlsen's title, is taking place in Moscow from March 10–30. Eight players, including six of the World's top-ten rated grandmasters. The time control is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move one. The guaranteed prize fund is US $420,000.

Candidates round twelve – Young guns forge ahead!

Report from Moscow by IM Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal

No one, absolutely no one, is pulling out ahead as the clear favourite to win the World Championship Candidates 2016. At the end of the twelfth round we have six players with a theoretical chance of winning this one, although the ones with clear edge at this point are definitely Fabiano Caruana and Sergey Karjakin. What’s even more interesting is the fact that both of them will play against each other in the last round of the tournament. As we are heading towards the end of the event the intensity of the players has increased. No one is satisfied with a quick draw. Even Topalov who has been rooted to the last spot from the start, has had to work hard because his opponents are gunning for the first place. This is what makes the Candidates special – the fight for that elusive gold. The only place with any meaning or value, is that one ticket to New York!

The twelfth round was filled with excitement – two decisive games and two fighting draws. Anish was so reluctant to split the point that he made Svidler play the drawn rook endgame for almost an hour, dragging on the day until 10 p.m.! So let’s first begin with Nakamura’s excellent preparation against Vishy Anand.

Daniel King on Round 12: Nakamura vs Anand and Karjakin vs Topalov

Fritztrainer DVDs by Daniel King

Note that ChessBase is doing daily one-hour roundup shows after each round

Hikaru Nakamura – Viswanathan Anand 1-0

Anand is having the most topsy-turvy event of his career at the Candidates 2016. One day he plays a complete brilliancy, reminding us what an amazing endgame player he is, and the next day his performance shows as if he is having the worst tournament of his life. This has been going on for four rounds now. Against Aronian he played a great endgame but this was followed by a debacle against Caruana. Karjakin got a taste of modern day Capablanca, while Nakamura simply crushed him in 26 moves!

Anand played with great ambitions. His move g5 was risky, although objectively pretty good. Nakamura knew all the intricacies of this line and he forced Anand to find the best ideas over the board – a task which turned out to be too much. Vishy made one inaccuracy and that was enough to land him in a completely lost position. Nakamura’s conversion was smooth and this gave the American his first convincing victory in the tournament.

Nakamura shows the lines in the press conference, while Vishy didn’t speak a single word

Even though the tournament hasn't been going as planned for Hikaru, a win is always welcome!

Can Vishy make another comeback?!

Sergey Karjakin – Veselin Topalov 1-0

The reason why everyone is looking forward to seeing the games of Veselin Topalov is because he has absolutely nothing to lose and is ready to try out new stuff. At the same time his opponents are fighting for something really huge. This battle of carefree versus responsible approach is making the Bulgarian’s games very interesting to follow.

In the twelfth round, in reply to Karjakin’s 1.e4, he replied with the Sicilian Defence. The position reached was extremely complicated with both sides having their chances. Topalov made a huge error in the following position:

The knight on c4 is as threatening as the pawn on g6. Here Black had to play 17…Bf6! Instead he went for 17…Rc8. The result was a complete disaster! After 18.h6! all the lines towards the black king were opened and the e6 pawn became too weak to hold. Karjakin won an exchange and with some care also the game.

Coming back from a loss is never easy and Karjakin by doing that showed that he is a real fighter

“I have invitations for the rest of 2016, so I am not worried.” – Veselin Topalov

Audio interview with Sergey Karjakin – he was too tired for video

Fabiano Caruana – Levon Aronian 0.5-0.5

After yesterday’s defeat to Peter Svidler it seemed as if Levon would not be at his best. But it turned out that the defeat had pretty much no effect on the Armenian’s mood and he was very much in a creative frame of mind.

Caruana has just taken the knight on f6. The normal move would have been to take on f6 back with the bishop. But Levon was in a creative mood and instead played 17…dxc3. This was a pawn sacrifice as White could take the pawn with 18.Bxe5. But Levon was looking forward to exactly this position. Making use of the awkward position of the rook on a2 he got quite a bit of counterplay. “I didn’t think the compensation for the pawn was enough, but the sacrifice was very interesting”, said Caruana after the game. Nearing the 40th move Aronian got a chance to execute one of the most beautiful combinations of his life.

Fabiano’s last move Rb1-a1 turned out to be a huge error. Black could have now sacrificed his rook with 38…Rxd3!! and won the game. The variations after the sacrifice are not so easy to calculate, and perhaps with more time Levon could have understood how powerful it was. In the game, however, he went for 38…Qc5, but the critical moment had passed and Caruana was able to hold. You can find the complete analysis of this sacrifice in the notes to the game below.

Aronian’s expression when he was shown that 38…Rxd3 was winning

Currently co-leading with 7.0/12, will he be Magnus Carlsen's next challenger?!

Peter Svidler – Anish Giri 0.5-0.5

Svidler began the game with 1.c4 and Anish played the solid reversed Sicilian setup with …e5,…Nf6 and …d5. Black got a good position out of the opening and had comfortably equalized. “The problem with such positions is that even if your opponent make twenty errors, yet it is well within the drawing zone”, is how Anish described the game. Peter didn’t play the best possible moves on many occasions but his moves were always decent. As a result Anish always had an edge but it never transformed into something tangible.

The result was a drawn rook ending which Giri pressed on for nearly an hour. Of course, he wanted to delay the moment when he would have a dozen consecutive draws to his name! In the end it was a draw and both the players are now on 50% with 6.0/12.

“Yes, that is a good move! It will allow you to equalize as White!” Anish with his typical witty
remarks even after seven hours of play

“After the number of mistakes I have made I think I shouldn’t give any opinions at this point”
Peter Svidler after the game!

26th of March is the final rest day of the tournament. The best thing about this year’s Candidates, unlike the previous edition in 2014, is that there is absolutely no way to tell who would be the winner. Caruana and Karjakin are the favourites, but if Anand beats Giri tomorrow then he is also in with a chance. As for Giri, Aronian and Svidler, a 2.0/2 is the only way in which they can realistically think about winning this tournament. Two exciting days of chess lie ahead and who knows, in case of a tiebreak, three!

Wondering why this report doesn’t contain images of anyone apart from the players? It’s because you will soon be treated to a pictorial report from Moscow by our photographer at the venue Amruta Mokal.

Standings after twelve rounds

Pairings and results

Roundup broadcasts

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Roundup Commentary Schedule

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