Thessaloniki Final: Caruana stops Kamsky, Dominguez wins the tournament

From May 22 to June 03, 2013, the fourth stage of the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2012-2013 took place in Thessaloniki, Greece. Twelve players competed in a round robin tournament with time controls of 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes and an increment of 30 seconds per move for each player. The Grand Prix Series consists of six tournaments to be held over two years, with 18 top players, each participating in four of the six tournaments. The winner and second placed player overall of the Grand Prix Series will qualify for the Candidates Tournament to be held in March 2014.

Round eleven report

Bacrot, Etienne - Ivanchuk, Vassily 0-1
Bacrot obtained superb compensation for his sacrificed pawn in this topical Gruenfeld. His series of innacuracies starting with 18.d5?! and ending with 22.Bg5?! gave Ivanchuk the opportunity to gradually improve his position and eventually take over the initiative. A beautiful combination starting with 33...Qf7! and 34...Nxd1! sacrificed a queen but gave Black a winning attack.

Despite his good start, Morozevich's finish was subpar and he finished near the bottom of the table.

Morozevich, Alexander - Ponomariov, Ruslan ½-½
The Russian's opening experiment left him simply down a pawn after only a few moves of chess. Luckily for him, Ruslan returned the favor with the very weak 21...exd5? instead of interposing 21...Ng4+! which would have left him at least up a pawn and with good chances for an attack on top of that. Clearly fatigue was a big issue in the last round. After returning the pawn there were almost no winning chances for either side.

Kasimdzhanov, Rustam - Grischuk, Alexander ½-½
In what seemed to be a very wild game, Grischuk actually simply got a very comfortable draw. The game up to move 20 was following Dominguez-Korobov from Loo earlier this year. The entire variation is currently considered to be quite sound for Black, and the move that Kasimdzhanov chose, although new, is a forced draw that Grischuk had previously analyzed.

With great mastery of the Najdorf and a repertoire that is very up to date, Grischuk obtained an easy draw in the last round.

Nakamura, Hikaru - Svidler, Peter 1-0
Nakamura found himself in trouble very early this game as his over-expanded structure was vulnerable to all of Black's pieces. Svidler finally won two pawns, but he did so in the worst possible way as he found his bishop permanently pinned on the eighth rank and dis-coordinated completely with the remaining rook on the fifth rank. Svidler could have simply shuffled the rook and a draw would have been agreed, but he kept pushing too hard for the win and Nakamura calculated a pretty and precise finishing blow near the end using his passed e-pawn to take the victory.

Nakamura was as cunning as ever, and Svidler simply pushed too hard.

Before the decisive game: orange juice vs. water.

Caruana, Fabiano - Kamsky, Gata 1-0
Caruana kept putting pressure on Kamsky's position from the very beginning. White created more problems for Black and his advantage increased, yet Black held on for a long time. Kamsky finally cracked on move 35...Kh7?? and Caruana swiftly punished him. Grandmaster Chirila offers full annotations:

"Everything's going according to plan..." the Italian avoided the Marshall attack and obtained a strong edge.

Dominguez in his typical thinking pose. The Cuban jumped to number eleven in the live ratings with this victory.

Dominguez Perez, Leinier - Topalov, Veselin 1-0
Topalov obtained a comfortable position out of the opening. However he overextended by putting his knight on e3 and slowly but surely Dominguez obtained play against Black's weak pawns. He was able to simplify into an endgame where his passed b-pawn was a serious concern to his opponent. It's possible that the endgame was drawn regardless, but Topalov didn't find a way and Dominguez was extremely precise. He won the game and the Grand Prix with a remarkable 2926 performance.

Grandmaster Chirila was kind enough to also annotate this important battle:

"And then the b-pawn advanced and advanced and advanced!" Grischuk, Svidler and Topalov.

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All pictures by Anastasiya Karlovich

Schedule and results

The games started at 14:00h Eastern European Summer time, 15:00h Moscow, 7 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here. The commentary on Playchess began one hour after the start of the games and is free for premium members.

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.