1/22/2013 – The top seed Magnus Carlsen booked yet another win – his fifth in this tournament – this time with black against the bottom seed, Chinese GM Hou Yifan, who now has five losses and one win. Magnus is a full point ahead of the World Champion Vishy Anand, who drew his game against Peter Leko. Loek van Wely beat Ivan Sokolov with black. Full report with video interviews and GM analysis.
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On this DVD you will be taken on a journey through what is arguably the sharpest opening line known to men.
€29.90
January 2013
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75. Tata Steel Chess Tournament
This event is taking place from January 12-27. The venue is as usual the traditional
De Moriaan Center in the Dutch sea resort of Wijk aan Zee. The tournament has
three Grandmaster Groups, which have 14 players and are held as full round robins
(each competitor plays against every other). The rate of play for all three
groups is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and finally
15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30 seconds/move increment starting
with the first move of the game.
Round nine report
By GM Alejandro Ramirez
The rest day rekindled the player’s fighting spirit, but too many of
today’s games were ‘close matches’ and plenty of draws occurred.
Group A: Round 9 - Tuesday January 22
Ivan Sokolov - Loek van Wely
0-1
Peter Leko - Vishy Anand
½-½
Sergey Karjakin - Pentala Harikrishna
½-½
Hou Yifan - Magnus Carlsen
0-1
Erwin L'Ami - Levon Aronian
½-½
Wang Hao - Fabiano Caruana
½-½
Hikaru Nakamura - Anish Giri
½-½
The subtleties of the Najdorf are details that elude even some grandmasters.
However both Peter Leko and Vishy Anand are very well versed in the subject,
and after only 25 moves they agreed to a draw in an equal position.
L’Ami punished Aronian’s aggressive setup against the English by
putting heavy pressure of his own on the queenside. The idea with Bd7 and Qc8
looked somewhat silly as nothing happened on the h-file. However, even though
White was able to win a pawn, it’s hard to say if he held a strong advantage
at any point. Through some accurate play Aronian steered the game into a drawn
endgame, where White’s bishop was just too bad.
Previously it was mentioned that Karjakin plays the Berlin with both white
and black. In this case he was White but it seemed that Harikrishna was able
to play toe to toe with him in this strange Berlin endgame. Karjakin never had
any chances and needed to find some accurate defensive moves to fully equalize.
Wang-Caruana (that's Fabiano thinking in the picture above) started out as
a boring and solid affair, but quickly turned messy and interesting. The fabulous
bishop trap setup with 17… e4! and 18… Na7! forced Wang to find
some resourceful moves in order to not be down a piece. The resulting material
balance was of a rook and two knights against a queen, but the queen was aided
by two passed pawns on the queenside. It’s possible that Caruana missed
many chances to push for some sort of advantage, mainly on move 41… Rc3!?
seemed better than the passive 41… Rb8. After winning the queen for a
rook and a knight, Caruana had an extra knight, but it was powerless against
White’s passed a-pawn. It sacrificed itself on a8 to force a stalemate.
Giri held an advantage during the entire game against Nakamura. His pair of
bishops and strong central pawns were obvious assets, and he must be disappointed
he was unable to use them. His rook move near the end, 37… Rg6, was particularly
bad and it simply forced a draw since his abandoned kingside was collapsing.
Giri missed many moves to solidify his center and use his advantages. Nakamura
escapes yet again, and it speaks volumes about his resourcefulness that he has
not lost a game so far considering the kind of positions he has gotten, but
it also should make him ponder if something is going wrong in his preparations.
The pendulum of the advantage seemed to swing wildly in the game Sokolov-Van
Wely. After obtaining a good position from the opening, Loek was definitely
in charge. However, after playing some inaccurate moves, it seemed that Sokolov
more than equalized.
White certainly missed his chance when on move 31 he could’ve played
the very strong move Qf4! forking both the d6 knight and the h4 bishop. Without
the h4 bishop, Black’s attack would’ve been null and the positional
advantages were all White’s. Time pressure followed with more mistakes,
but finally after the move 36… Qc7 it was obvious that the game was Black’s.
Sokolov played a few more moves by inertia and had to resign.
The lowest rated player was paired against the highest, and sometimes that
yields very interesting results. In this case, Hou went for the throat with
the pawn sacrifice 12.e6 which has dubious value. Carlsen took the pawn slowly
and started repelling the Chinese GM’s attack. The fantastic move 33…
c3! was a real shocker.
Carlsen gave back his extra pawn for his own initiative, and it was both very
real and very strong. A resulting endgame put Carlsen in control of too many
passed pawns for Hou’s queen and the game was over, giving Carlsen a commanding
lead of the tournament.
Magnus Carlsen analyses his game against Hou Yifan
Replay all the games of the round on our JavaScript player
Current standings
In the latest Live Chess Ratings (updated
on 22 January 2013 at 21:59 GMT) Magnus Carlsen has reached a new peak of 2870.
We find it hard to imagine how high this Norwegian kid still intends to go and
who in the world could think about putting the breaks on him.
There is full broadcast of all games on the official site and on the Playchess
server, which will provide live audio commentary of the most interesting
games (free for Premium members) starting at 14:30h for each round, 14:00h for
the final round. Commentary begins at approx. 3 p.m. and lasts 2 to 2½
hours, with breaks in between. A round-up show is provided at 8 PM server time.
Commentary is available, by the following experts:
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.
The French Defence Powerbase 2021 is a database and contains 9839 games from the Mega 2021 and the Correspondence Database 2020, 644 of which are annotated.
The main part of the material on which the French Powerbook 2021 is based comes from the playchess.com engine room: 637,000 games. An impressive number to which 80,000 games from correspondence chess and the Mega were added.
Looking for a surprise weapon against 1.e4? Try the Stafford Gambit! After the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5, rather than following the solid lines of the Petroff after 3...d6, Black prefers to sacrifice a pawn with 3...Nc6 4.Nxc6 dxc6.
Brand new opening videos by Jan Werle (Rossolimo variant) and Mihail Marin (Italian duels Carslen vs. So). "Lucky bag" with analyses by Giri, Edouard, Abdusattorov, Kuljasevic et al. Over 47,000 new games for your database
Naturally, a universal approach using ...Nf6, ...g7-g6 and ...d7-d5 as the base would be very useful for players of all classes, saving time and energy and promising a fluid, dynamic position.
Anniversary issue with several extras! "My favourite young Carlsen game": 22 authors annotate. Pearls from Wijk: Jorden van Foreest and Anish Giri comment on their best games. Plus 11 opening articles, 3 opening videos, "Carlen's strategy" and much more!
€19.95
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