Paris 07: Astounding Blunders

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!

You may have re important ings planed for ter tonight, but first we bring you the report on today's round:

Round 7

Not the most eventful draw of the tournament,
but it seems it is tough for Tomashevsky to find a fighting game

Tomashevsky, Evgeny ½-½ Wang Hao
The Russian obtained a slight advantage from this Catalan, but the Chinese was very resourceful. Despite his worse structure he was able to obtain sufficient counterplay to force many pieces off the board and was able to eventually hold the endgame without too many issues.

Wang Hao is on six draws and a loss to Ivanchuk

This is the face of concentration

Ivanchuk, Vassily ½-½ Ponomariov, Ruslan
In another Catalan in the Ukrainian duel it was impossible to say that White obtained anything from the opening. The variation is well known; White wins a pawn but the opposite colored bishops and the easy play for Black give him compensation. However on top of this Ponomariov was able to quickly regain his pawn and secure full equality.

The Ukrainian duel petered out to a simple draw for Ponomariov

Dominguez Perez, Leinier ½-½ Bacrot, Etienne
This Berlin defense went in completely the wrong way for the Cuban. His structure was shattered in the queenside early on while Black's pieces became active. With his kingside pawn expanse blocked on the light squares and being saddled with a dark squared bishop, it was only Black that had any hopes of being better. However Bacrot seemed to think that White's position was solid enough and forced a repetition in a position where maybe he could have at least played on for a few more moves.

Bacrot is also at 50% with a loss against Nakamura and a win against Giri

Giri hasn't lost in a couple of rounds, but he really would like to win a game

Giri, Anish ½-½ Fressinet, Laurent
The Queen's Indian will forever be a battleground between top grandmasters. There are always new resources to be found in this opening! Giri somehow managed not only to get e4 in, but also e5 and obtain a nice central/kingside expansion. Fressinet countered with an incursion into the queenside with his major pieces, threatening pawns and exchanging major pieces. Giri counter aggressively by disregarding his pawns and continuing to pressure the kingside despite the reduced material. Faced with imminent danger, Fressinet jettisoned his queenside pawns to obtain counterplay and distract White's queen. This worked as it gave him enough time to set up a defense and the resulting endgame was almost impossible to win for White despite the fact that he had an extra pawn: Black's activity and the fact that all the pawns were on the same side guaranteed the draw.

A confident Nakamura strolls while his opponent thinks his opening moves

Nakamura, Hikaru 1-0 Caruana, Fabiano
It is rare to see a near 2800 player blunder before move 15, but this is exactly what happened. The following quick annotations tell the story:

A fateful blunder puts Caruana further away from a position in which he can win the tournament

A titanic struggle in which Gelfand came out ahead

Gelfand, Boris 1-0 Grischuk, Alexander
Gelfand's opening didn't yield much. It seems he wasn't entirely sure how to deal with Grischuk's early e6/b6 set up which allowed him to play f5 before developing his knight to f6. In an equal position Grischuk refused a threefold repetition and went for the win with a pawn sacrifice. Gelfand immediately returned the pawn so as to not be saddled with tripled pawns and he was admittedly slightly worse. The Russian kept piling pressure on the kingside while White seemed to be without a clear plan, but still with a space advantage and his position was far from collapsing. Grischuk might have over-committed to the kingside, but his definite mistake came with 31...Nh4?? it's unclear what he exactly missed, probably that after 32...Nxf3 33.dxc7 Rxc7 White has the amazing 34.Rxg7! winning. In time pressure the advantage was blundered and given back, but ultimately Gelfand won.

Grischuk declined a draw and fought on; you can't blame this man for not trying!

Standings

Replay round seven 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.