Archive for January 27th, 2010

We had to wait ten rounds for this: World Champion Vishy Anand won his first game, with a little help from opponent Alexei Shirov. Magnus Carlsen surprised everyone in the world by playing the French Defence for the first time in a tournament game – and won it against his permanent rival Sergey Karjakin. Vladimir Kramnik drew and is in the sole lead. Illustrated report.

In round 7 in Wijk, Nigel Short was within touching distance of a win over Ex-World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. In the position in the diagram he had to
decide whether to exchange queens or to gobble up another pawn with Qxc5. Short chose
50.Qxc5, but after 50…Be6! 51.g4 Bxf5 52.Qxf5 Qb2+ the
activity of the black queen turned out to be the decisive drawing factor, despite Black being two pawns behind. But how should the minor piece ending after
50.Qxf6 gxf6
be evaluated? Can the extra pawn be made to tell in the struggle of knight against bishop? Yes, says GM Karsten Müller in ChessBase Magazine Online.

It was a fateful day – in all three groups. Vladimir Kramnik beat Magnus Carlsen after the latter blundered in terrible time trouble. Smeets, van Wely and Karjakin won their games, against Caruana, Leko and Nakamura. In Group B Anish Giri suffered his first loss against Anna Muzychuk, while Ray Robson also dropped the full point against his main rival Li Chao. Big pictorial report.