Paris 06: Caruana wins, ties for lead

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!

Sebag Simul

Marie Sebag, the highest rated women French player, gave a simultaneous exhibition at the FFE (French Chess Federation) which is very close to the playing site. We have some pictures of the event and we will bring you the full results a little later:

Sebag, sitting at 2510 FIDE rating, is France's number one woman and the World's number 13

Round 6

If you were wondering where Grischuk's chair went (he is using a normal wooden one)... well, the arbiters are putting it to good use!

Tomashevsky's Spanish: still perfect

Bacrot, Etienne ½-½ Tomashevsky, Evgeny
Tomashevsky keeps proving that his openings come with great preparation. Bacrot tied a more sedate approach against Tomashevsky's so far impenetrable Spanish defense, but it yielded nothing. With some precise moves Tomashevsky forced a dead drawn rook endgame. The Russian sits at 50% and it seems that he cannot be beaten even if he is holding the black pieces.

Giri tries to remember the Karpov-Caruana game

Wang Hao ½-½ Giri, Anish
The Chinese player decided to repeat a line that was seen in the game Karpov-Caruana from 2008. Giri was very familiar with the variation, and it is little wonder that he was - it is known that Giri and Caruana have used Chuchelov as a second in previous years. Wang Hao did not provide any clear improvement on the aforementioned game and Giri obtained equality without issues. White had no real chances in the resulting rook endgame.

Gelfand wanted a fight in a sharp Sicilian, but Fressinet was not in the mood for that

Fressinet, Laurent ½-½ Gelfand, Boris
Gelfand played the move 2...d6 in the Sicilian, already an indication that he was not going to play the Sveshnikov against 3.d4. It would have been interesting to see what sharp Sicilian Gelfand chose, but instead Fressinet was the one that quickly deviated by playing an unusual Bb5+ Sicilian. The move 4.c4 holds some poison but only if Black is unfamiliar with the territory, which was not the case with Gelfand. The Israeli played a simplifying combination and after all the pieces were traded off the board the draw became obvious.

Grischuk and Fressinet seemed to have some time during the opening to walk around and see the other games

Grischuk decided he wanted to place his king on c4 on move 17. This was somehow not suicide, and made sense.

Grischuk, Alexander ½-½ Nakamura, Hikaru
Grischuk's king was on c4 by move 17, but that is not as exciting as it sounds as the truth of the position was that Black had already taken a slight initiative in an endgame that had a symmetrical pawn structure. Nakamura neutralized Grischuk's Catalan without problems and another drawn rook endgame was reached.

Nakamura has shown greater variety in his repertoire: insetad of relying on ultra-aggressive openings such as the King's Indian Defense and the Dutch he has mastered more sedate Catalans and Nimzo-Indians

Ponomariov, Ruslan ½-½ Dominguez Perez, Leinier
Ponomariov was simply unable to put a dent in Dominguez's Petroff and he had to settle for a draw to make sure that his pawn structure didn't become a serious issue.

Dominguez is at 50% with his only loss coming against Gelfand

Caruana was about to have to prove his endgame technique, but he didn't have to

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Ivanchuk, Vassily
Clearly the game of the round. The game was normal for quite some time; after obtaining a slight pull from a French Caruana kept pressing his advantages despite the very closed nature of the position. Black's bishops suffered somewhat but Black's position kept holding. The Italian simplified into a superior bishop endgame that seemed to hold many dangers for Black and Ivanchuk... well... he resigned! Probably out of all the players in this tournament Ivanchuk would be the only one to resign in such a position. He was surely worse, but he wasn't down material yet, he wasn't in a zugzwang and White's path to victory first of all wasn't obvious and second could still be botched up. With this victory Caruana moves to tied-for-first with Gelfand.

Ivanchuk's approach was actually rather logical: he thought he was lost, so he resigned...

Standings

Replay round six games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

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.