Paris 03: Four white wins

Sixth FIDE Grand Prix - Paris 2013

The sixth and final Grand Prix of the system is taking place at the Chapelle de la Villedieu, founded in 1180 by soldier-monks of the Order of the Temple. The playing site is considerably west of Paris. The tournament will determine the last qualifiers for the Candidates tournament for the next World Chess Championship cycle. This leg of the series is being played under classical time controls: Time control: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and then each player gets 15 minutes and an increment of 30 seconds per move after the second time control). No draws offers: Sofia rules!

Round 3

The serenity outside of the chapelle diverges from the struggles played inside of it

Nakamura, Hikaru 1-0 Bacrot, Etienne
The game started as a normal Orthodox variation of the Queen's Gambit, but it quickly turned sharp as Nakamura expanded aggressively on the kingside. Bacrot responded by countering on the center and initiating an attack on the queenside, where the American decided to castle. By move 17 Bacrot had already committed his chips, as he sacrificed a piece for tow pawns and the possibility of attacking his opponent's king with his queen. Nakamura calmly defended, but Bacrot retained compensation until his inaccuracy with 22...Qb5?! After this move Nakamura gained control of the position and repelled Bacrot's attack, after which the extra piece was simply too much.

"I have one horsey, he doesn't have a horsey... I should win this one" Hikaru Nakamura defended masterfully and converted his extra piece

Giri, Anish ½-½ Tomashevsky, Evgeny
Giri was unable to breach Tomashevsky's Spanish set-up. The Russian has shown to be unbelievably solid in this opening and he obtained an easy draw again today.

Tomashevsky keeps showing impressive opening knowledge and had no issues holding a draw today

The chairs are marked with each player's names. The idea is that the arbiters can move the chairs around as the rounds change so that the "settings" on the chair (height, firmness) stay with the player.

Ivanchuk, Vassily 1-0 Wang Hao
Wang Hao was able to obtain a slight edge with black straight out of the opening as his pair of bishops was the only factor that mattered in the position. He keps expanding and pushing for the win, but a clever resource by Ivanchuk on on move 44 allowed him to equalize the position. Wang Hao should've looked for a way to secure the draw, but instead he kept pushing forward without regard for his opponent's threats. Ivanchuk picked up a pawn and a further blunder soon afterwards cost the Chinese player a full piece, after which the game was over.

Wang Hao didn't sense the danger when he had to and lost a slightly preferable position

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Fressinet
Caruana repeated the variation that was seen in Nakamura-Aronian and Carlsen-Aronian from the recent Sinquefield cup, but added his own twist to this known variation by not trading queens. Fressinet's pawn weaknesses started to tell after some subsequent trades and his position slowly started to deteriorate. Caruana showed excellent technique in the endgame and won a nice technical game.

Caruana played a fantastical technical game

Fressinet loses on round three and goes back to 50%

Gelfand, Boris 1-0 Dominguez Perez, Leinier
Gelfand got the better end of this isolated queen's pawn position as soon as he was allowed to push his d-pawn forward with 15.d5! His advantage in development and his activity gave him a stronger position than his opponent's. Dominguez tried to retaliate by complicating the matter and sacrificing some material. Gelfand played an extremely precise game up until his move 40 which let Black somewhat back in to the game. Keeping the rooks on the board would have crushed the Cubans defenses promptly, but instead he had to be a little more patient and win the queen vs. rook and bishop endgame, which he did eventually convert although with many more problems than should have been allowed.

The tournament's official commentator, Sergey Tiviakov, eagerly engages Ivanchuk on a discussion about his previous game before the start of round three

Grischuk, Alexander ½-½ Ponomariov, Ruslan
Grischuk had one single advantage throughout the entire game: a superior knight against a somewhat lame bishop. However this was simply not enough to push for a win, even though he tried as hard as he could. Grischuk wanted to bounce back from his loss in the previous round but the Ukrainian's defense proved completely impenetrable.

AI from Australia, Anastasia Sorokina

Standings

Replay round three games

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Schedule

The games start at 15:00h European time, 17:00h Moscow, 9 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here.

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.