World Cup 3.1: Aronian, Grischuk shocked

The FIDE World Cup is a knockout, starting with 128 players, with two games (90 min for 40 moves + 30 min for the rest, with 30 seconds increment) between pairs of players. The tiebreaks consist of two rapid games (25 min + 10 sec), then two accelerated games (10 min + 10 sec), and finally an Armageddon. The winner and the runner-up of the World Cup 2013 will qualify for the Candidates Tournament of the next World Championship cycle. The venue is the city of Tromsø, which lies in the northern-most region of Norway, almost 400 km inside the Arctic Circle. You can find all details and links to many ChessBase articles on Tromsø here. The World Cup starts on Sunday, August 11th and lasts until September 3rd (tiebreaks, closing ceremony). Each round lasts three days, while the final will consist of four classical games. Thursday August 29 is a free day. A detailed schedule can be found here.

Preparing for round three, with the tables, seats for spectators and board transmissions

Levon Aronian, playing white, found himself in an unsatisfactory position against the Dutch Defence
of Evgeny Tomashevsky, who ouplayed the top seed and won the full point in 58 moves.

Le Quang Liem (above) beat Alexander Grischuk in a K+6 pawns ending and took the full point.

Hikaru Nakamura, playing black, did not give 21-year-old Indian GM B. Adhiban any
chances in an Exchange Ruy Lopez, chalking up the full point after 42 moves

The game between last year's World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand and Ukrainian GM Alexander Moiseenko, 65 points below him on the rating scale, was decided in an instructive endgame which our ChessBase Magazine columnist Karsten has annotated for us.

Gata Kamsky (right), playing black, chose the Dutch Defence (Leningrad System)
to snatch the full point from local boy Jon Ludvig Hammer in 40 moves

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov had to concede a 23-move draw to 14-year-old Chinese GM Wei Yi
in a Classical Nimzo Indian when his novelty (on move 14) failed to convince

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave punished Leinier Dominguez' Sicilian Najdorf with a 50-move victory

Peter Svidler (above) easily beat Teimour Radjabov (left, fetching a refreshment) –
Teimour played the King's Indian and lost in 32 moves

Julio Granda Zuniga (right) botched a probably winning position against
Anish Giri on move 54 and had to instantly resign

Equally traumatic was the game

It was a horribly frustrating start of round three for Alexander Morozevich: against Nikita Vitiugov he played the Rubinstein Variation of the Nimzo-Indian and by move 59 seemed just a few steps away from victory. But he allowed the opponent to put up a plausible defence and then blew it on move 73. In spite of continued efforts the game ended on move 96 in a stalemate draw.

All results of the third round first games

• All results and standings on the official site

Pictures provided by Paul Truong in Tromsø

Replay all games of the round

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Video reports from Tromsø

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: R1 – R2 – R3 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.