Tal 02: Nakamura and Gelfand win with Black

The Eighth International Tal Memorial Chess Tournament is being held from June, 13 to 24, 2013, with a rest days on June 16 and June 20. The rounds generally start at 15:00h (=3 p.m.) Moscow time, with the first round starting at 6 p.m. and the final round at 1 p.m. Accommodation is in the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow, Tverskaya str. 3, while the event takes place in the in New Technologies Center Digital October, Bersenevskaya Embankment 6, in Moscow. The tournament has ten invited players and is a round robin with time controls of one hour and 40 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds for each move starting from move one. Full information on special rules, regulation, prize money, etc. can be found in our initial report.

Round two report

Andreikin, Dmitry - Anand, Vishy ½-½
Andreikin's aggressive style put him behind three pawns at some stage, only to recover them with interest and emerge up one! However this was insufficient for a win, as Anand's rook was active in the endgame and White's pawns were a conglomerate of targets.

If one isn't familiar with Gelfand's facial expressions, it might be easy to assume that he is in deep trouble. The truth is that he had the game under control the entire time.

Caruana, Fabiano - Gelfand, Boris 0-1
Caruana got outplayed in this sharp variation of the Najdorf. Gelfand had comfortably equalized and this was especially clear when he was able to break with d5, but that did not mean that Caruana should allow the pawn to push forward onto d4. After the pawn took key squares from his opponent, Black's advantage was without question. A blunder on move 32 only allowed Gelfand to collect the point quicker. Caruana does not enter the 2800 club just yet.

GM Daniel King provides video analysis of Caruana vs Gelfand 

Karjakin's response to Carlsen's opening was not enough for the Russian to attempt a win.

Karjakin, Sergey - Carlsen, Magnus ½-½
Karjakin got absolutely nothing from the opening and Carlsen simply obtained a nice and smooth draw. Karjakin for some reason did not want to go into the Berlin and his sideline held no poison.

The people who suffer most at chess tournaments are never the players: Carlsen's father Henrik and his second Peter Heine Nielsen

Morozevich, Alexander - Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar ½-½
Morozevich played a very strong opening against Mamedyarov's Caro-Kann. Black was forced into an unfavorable queen exchange which gave the Russian a strong initiative on the queenside and better development. However, slowly but surely Morozevich let go of the thread of the game, and the Mamedyarov started to obtain serious counterplay.

"Oh man, he actually showed up...?"

"...yeah, he showed up..." Morozevich and Mamedyarov shake hands before the round starts.

Kramnik, Vladimir - Nakamura, Hikaru 0-1
Kramnik convincingly obtained an advantage against the King's Indian by employing the Fianchetto variation. He was up a pawn without any significant compensation, but a series of questionable moves allowed the American fully back in the game, and after the strong retort 27...Nc4! the position became very muddy. Hikaru not only regained his lost pawn but he also obtained a second one. His passed pawns on the queenside became difficult to stop. Kramnik attempted some kind of kingside counterplay but it was clearly insufficient.

Nakamura stayed his cool in the face of problems and emerged victorious.

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Schedule

All pictures by Etery Kublashvili

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.