Paris 10: Gelfand and Caruana win, 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 p laying 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 10

Nakamura-Gelfand was definitely the game of the day... even Giri took time off to watch!

The players are tired. Today Fressinet confused himself and lost quickly.

Fressinet, Laurent 0-1 Bacrot, Etienne
The French duel resulted in a strangely one-sided game as Fressinet basically collapsed out of the opening. He made a couple of strange decisions, but the truly bad ones started with 22.c5? after which some simple moves left White down two pawns and in the receiving end of a deadly attack.

Playing natural and good moves Bacrot obtained an easy victory and is now tied for third

Ivanchuk was following Robson-Volokitin until move 16, when Black's Qd7!? allowed the Dutch to equalize comfortably

Ivanchuk, Vassily ½-½ Giri, Anish
The Petroff landed the players in a truly symmetrical position that was very much dead drawn from move 25.

The second Petroff of the day actually turned into a French, but Dominguez found himself without problems anyways

Grischuk, Alexander ½-½ Dominguez Perez, Leinier
The Russian player played an unusual 5.d3 which transposes into an exchange French, hardly the most testing way of playing against the Petroff. Dominguez had no problems holding equality and forcing a repetition shortly afterwards.

Trying to surprise his opponent? 5.d3 is hardly considered to be the critical line of the Petroff, also known in some places as the Russian defense.

A back and forth game that was always about even and ended in a draw

Ponomariov, Ruslan ½-½ Wang Hao
A maneuver heavy game was played between these players in an advance Caro-Kann. Wang Hao got a comfortable position from the opening, but Ponomariov kept his position tied down to the defense by advancing his kingside. Eventually Wang Hao stalled his opponent's advances but wasn't able to counterattack by any means, and the game ended in a draw when the players ran out of ideas.

Grandmaster Romain Edouard brings us brilliant annotations of today's key games:

Nakamura, Hikaru 0-1 Gelfand, Boris

Nakamura loses his lead and is now in third place, but definitely not out of contention

a very important victory for Gelfand

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Tomashevsky, Evgeny

Caruana had to win to keep his dream of participating in the Candidate's tournament alive, and he has a chance to fulfill it if the results align correctly tomorrow

Tomashevsky steered away from his trusted Spanish and was finally toppled

Romain Edouard Born in 1990 in Poitiers, France, Romain won the French and European U16 Championships in 2006, came second in the U18 section in European and World Championships in 2007, and was co-champion of France in 2012. He has been a member of the French national team since 2009 (except in 2011). He won several international open tournaments: Bad Wiessee 2008, Zaragoza 2008, Echternach 2009, Andorra 2009, Hastings 2010, Echternach 2010, Clermont-Ferrand 2011, etc. as well as closed tournaments: Grand Prix de Bordeaux 2007, Antwerp 2011, Nancy 2012.

Standings

Replay round ten 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.