Candidates Rd8: A solid round

The FIDE Candidates Tournament is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk (Russia). The first round will start on Thursday, March 13 at 3 p.m. local time, the final round is on Sunday, March 30, 2014. The event is a double round robin (14 rounds). The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 and 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move 61. The tournament will determine the challenger who will face the reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen in a title match later this year. The prize fund is 600,000 Euros (= US $832,000), the first place 135,000 and last (8th) place 25,000 Euros.

Round Eight

Daniel King shows the game Svidler vs Karjakin

Andreikin is one of the five players at -1 (3.5/8)

Kramnik, Vladimir ½-½ Andreikin, Dmitry
Andreikin's treatment of the opening was ultra-solid. His a6 Slav locked up the position quickly, but it made him very passive. White's control of the c-file and his two bishops was simply not enough for him to break through as Black lacked weaknesses while White had to contend with his weak f3 and d4 pawns. Eventually Kramnik sacrificed one of these for some activity, but it was only enough for a draw.

Andreikin was super solid, and even Kramnik couldn't bring down his fortress

Svidler, Peter 0-1 Karjakin, Sergey
Grandmaster Elshan Moriadiabadi brings us a full report of this game.

Elshan Moradiabadi - Guest Commentator Elshan was born in Iran, and he became champion of that country at the age of 16, scoring an impressive 10/11 and finished ahead of Ehsan Ghaem Maghami. He is currently Iran's highest rated player. He now studies at Rawls College of Business in Texas Tech University, where he is on his way to obtain a PhD in Management Information system.

Svidler cannot be happy with a loss with White,
putting him far from first place contention

Topalov, Veselin ½-½ Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar
An interesting but short game. A double-edged Najdorf saw the Azeri player sacrifice a piece for the initiative. Topalov saw nothing better than to return it to force a queen exchange, but he did gain the slightest bit of pressure against Black's pawns in the resulting endgame. However Black was never in any real problems and the game resulted in a draw.

Topalov and Mamedyarov did play an
interesting game, sadly it fizzled into a draw

Aronian, Levon ½-½ Anand, Viswanathan

This game had a lot of anticipation,
but Aronian was unable to create anything at all

Without a doubt this was a letdown for the spectators. Aronian quickly went pawn hunting in a very strange opening but as a result of this his position was completely tied down. Anand didn't have any good break-through plans but he probably wasn't worried about any plans that Aronian might have as the Armenian lacked space. An unusual repetition ensued on move 15 and the game was drawn.

Aronian protects his lead, but he is still sharing it

Join us tomorrow for live commentary on the playchess.com server with the combination of the experienced grandmaster Simon Williams from England and the still somewhat young Alejandro Ramirez from USA. Aronian and Anand are still in the lead, but how hard will they push against their opponents to get away from the pack?

Games of the round:

Click on drop-down menu for all games

Standings after eight rounds

Photos from the official website

Schedule and results

Note: the games are played at 3 PM local time, which is 10 a.m. CET (Paris) and 5 a.m. EST (New York). Click here if you are uncertain what that means for your local time.

Playchess commentary

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being 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.