Sinquefield 02: Exciting games all around

2014 Sinquefield Cup This super-GM double round robin tournament is being played from August 27th to September 7th. It is billed as the strongest tournament in the history of chess. The players – Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Fabiano Caruana (Italy), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) – are the world's number 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 9, the average rating is 2801, making this the first ever Category XXIII tournament! The prize fund is US $315,000 in total, with the winner getting $100,000, the runner up $75,00, and the rest $50,000 – $20,000. The venue is the Chess Club and Scholastic Center at 4657 Maryland Avenue, Saint Louis, MO 63108. Tickets cost $15 per round, $65 for five rounds and $100 for all ten rounds.

Round Two

Saint Louis is back to being hot, hot hot! It isn't just the weather - which improved immensely from yesterday - but the games are as good as one can ask for from any tournament!

Surprisingly, this was not the game of the day

Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ Carlsen, Magnus
A tense struggle! If anyone had shown the position on the board to a grandmaster after only 15 moves, the logical thing to say would be that it was a King's Indian and the colors had been reversed accidentally! Nakamura opened the position before his kingside was in danger, but Black retained an annoying initiative. Carlsen sacrificed a pawn, which was declined, but his structure suffered because of it. Before he got in any trouble Carlsen sacrificed a piece for a perpetual check and the draw was sealed.

Nakamura focusing before his usual grudge-match. Carlsen said some not-so-nice things about his opponent before the tournament on Norwegian television.

Carlsen's choice of opening was unsual, but it worked out

Both sides followed an old game for a while
between two famous players, Sax and Smyslov

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
What a preparation! Caruana's fabulous theoretical idea, that he had prepared against Mamedyarov and caught MVL with by accident, proved to be too complicated for the Frenchman to figure out over the board. Down on time and without any clear path one bad move was all it took for Black to go down in flames. A must see game!

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was not pleased to fall into prep

Aronian, Levon 1-0 Topalov, Veselin
An exciting game. Topalov seized the initiative from the get-go but Aronian's (unplanned?) exchange sacrifice proved to be difficult to refute in a practical game. The Bulgarian lost his footing surprisingly quickly, and with strange time management and some weird defensive moves he found himself in a difficult situation. That being said, his decision to castle long into the line of fire was difficult to understand, and it basically lost him the game only a few moves later.

The start of a strange but exciting game

Aronian played great... after losing an exchange!

Topalov is on 0.0/2, but his spirits are high

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Standings

Photos by Lennart Ootes

Pairings

Games start at 2 p.m. local time (21:00h CEST, 23:00h Moscow, Thursday 0:30 New Delhi, 04:00h Tokyo, 05:00 Canberra – check your location here).

Playoffs, if necessary, will be on the 7th at noon.

The games will be broadcast live on Playchess, with expert analysis (see schedule below).

Broadcast Schedule

Links Official tournament site 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.