Seventh Tal Memorial in Moscow The event is a ten-player round robin event, is taking place from June 8th to 18th in the Pashkov House (Vozdvizhenka Street 3/5, p.1), Moscow, Russia. Rest days are June 11 and 15. Time control: 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move one. Games start at 15:00h local time (last round 13:00h). Draw offers are not allowed until after the first time control. The participants are required to comment on their games in the press center after each round. The prize fund is 100,000 Euros.

Round four

With four out of five games ending in draws and not changes in the top places, you might be inclined to conclude the round was uneventful or dull, but this was far from the case. In fact, the only win of the round was actually one of the least eventful games, in spite of the result.

After a first round loss to Morozevich, Caruana is back to 50% with his win over Tomashevsky

Of course, this is not meant to besmirch Fabiano Caruana’s win over Evgeny Tomashevsky. Tomashevsky mishandled the opening, gave up a pawn to try and get play, and eventually went down.  The two leaders, Alexander Morozevich and Teimour Radjabov,  banged heads, but neither made any real progress and the draw came as no surprise.

Vladimir Kramnik was actually annoyed after his draw against Levon Aronian, and had managed to achieve a very healthy advantage, one that he felt he might have better negotiated. Instead, he failed to find the best way to develop it, and the Armenian genius managed to neutralize the threats and liquidate into a dead drawn endgame.

Vladimir Kramnik was miffed that he was unable to do more with his advantage, but
is still in third, just half a point behind the leaders.

The game of the round was the incredibly complicated slugfest between Magnus Carlsen and Alexander Grischuk. Carlsen had been on the ropes in two games, and made nothing in his third, and was visibly anxious to stop the series of draws and promote his claims to the top prize.

Carlsen was in no mood for a quiet game, and went all out in his unique style, for a win.

This led to some highly unorthodox strategic ideas in which he deliberately allowed his kingside pawns to be shattered and dark-squared bishop to be boxed in, in exchange for play on the light squares and ideas of his own. Even Garry Kasparov, who has never been shy about his opinions, when he checked in to see how the games were going, took one look and refused to pronounce anything beyond it being a “strange game”.

Alexander Grischuk valiantly fought off a kamikaze Carlsen

Eventually the mess began to untangle and Carlsen threw more gasoline on the fire by sacrificing his exchange, but only managed to eat up all his and Grischuk’s time on the clocks, and with seconds left, forced Black into a repetition.

Annotated game by GM Alejandro Ramirez

The longest game of the round was once more Hikaru Nakamura’s, showing his desire to fight and play to the bitter end. Luke McShane achieved a huge advantage, that Kasparov, checking in Playchess, summarily declared “strategically winning”. However, the Englishman lost the thread and when his chronic time-trouble appeared, deteriorated into a pawn-down rook endgame that was nevertheless a clear draw. When play continued even in defiance of its futile nature, GM Ian Rogers, commenting on the live feed (see below for link) jokingly suggested online spectators check the TV for a good football game instead. On the upside: it beats unfought draws.

Complete round four games

Pictures by Eteri Kublashvili

Standings after four rounds

Tal Memorial 2012 Round four Play of the Day by Daniel King: Carlsen-Grischuk

Tal Memorial Moscow 2012: Commentary on Aronian-McShane by IM Andrew Martin

Schedule and Results

Playchess live commentary plan for the Tal Memorial 2012

Links Official tournament site + video clips 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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