Norway 07: Giri dizzies himself

The Unibet Norway Chess Tournament will take place in Stavanger, Norway from June 2nd to June 13th. The tournament features some of the best players in the world and has a massive rating average of 2774.

Round Seven

That's former World Championship Contender Nigel Short on the guitar. Yup.

Daniel King shows a summary of round 7.

Svidler, Peter ½-½ Agdestein, Simen
A somewhat rubbish opening left Svidler with the pair of bishops but an overall bad position, with no coordination whatsoever. The players repeated moves in a position where maybe Agdestein could have tried to push for an advantage, as it was less clear how White would play than Black.

Carlsen, Magnus ½-½ Grischuk, Alexander
A very long endgame. Not surprisingly the Grunfeld reappears in the tournament and although Carlsen certainly had the advantage throughout the entire game it is hard to pinpoint where exactly he could have improved. Despite having an extra pawn in the endgame, Black's active bishop and active king proved sufficient to hold the draw, barely.

Grischuk overcame the pressure from Vitamin C

Giri, Anish 0-1 Karjakin, Sergey
A brutal game. The players shuffled for what seem like forever before Giri made any sort of progress in a close English position. Karjakin lost the exchange at some point but his position seemed to be a fortress. Giri sacrificed a pawn to open lines for his queen, but Black became too active just in time and forced a perpetual. On move 131, however, the Dutch player simply blundered a powerful move that landed him in a mating net and he was forced to resign.

Too much piece shuffling caused Giri's mind to spin out of control

The amount of patience required for today's game was surreal

Kramnik, Vladimir ½-½ Aronian, Levon
Kramnik definitely held a strong advantage in this game. His superior structure and better activity gave him good winning chances. However at some point he misplayed it, and the opposite colored bishops always caused problems in conversion. Aronian held on to a draw at the end.

Big Vlad certainly had a chance to reclaim solo first today

Caruana, Fabiano ½-½ Topalov, Veselin
The game started out as a wild Sicilian. White sacrificed a piece for three pawns but to neutralize the initiative Black counter-sacrifced an exchange for a pawn. The resulting position left White with two pawns and two rooks against Black's two minor pieces. Caruana was certainly pushing, but Topalov's active pieces allowed him to retain the draw.

A tense game that Topalov ended up holding

Standings

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Schedule of Events

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Links Official tournament site Blitz games in PGN 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.