Tata Steel round 3 report

Photo provided by Frits Agterdenbos at http://www.chessvista.com

Report of round 3

Magnus Carlsen of Norway, the world’s highest ranked chess player, replaced Armenia’s Levon Aronian on top of the standings in grandmaster group A of the 2012 Tata Steel Tournament after an exciting third-round duel between the two ended in a victory for the Norwegian Monday (see picture). Playing white in a Queen’s Gambit, Carlsen profited from an overly aggressive black kingside pawn advance to gain an early advantage but Aronian fought back for all he was worth. In the end, it took Carlsen 68 moves before he forced Aronian – the number two on the international rating list- to admit defeat.

Carlsen left no doubt afterwards that he was far from happy with the win. Judging from the look on his face, in fact, no one would have guessed that he had just beaten his strongest opponent on the planet and taken the lead in the world’s strongest tournament.

“I was completely winning, of course,” he complained to journalists. “All I had to do was to try and find the most accurate way to win.” Apparently, he failed. “No, I didn’t feel good about that but I had to go on, and in the end I won mostly by luck. But a win is a win.” Asked if Aronian might have salvaged a draw, Carlsen said he felt he was “probably still winning” after he “wasted the advantage” but admitted that the Armenian came awfully close to escaping with a half point.

There was an added bonus of 500 euros for the lucky but far from satisfied winner when Dutch GM Ivan Sokolov decided to award the “Piet Zwart” prize for the round’s most attractive group-A game to the 22-year-old Norwegian. The prize, named for a former Wijk-aan-Zee tournament director, is funded jointly by the municipalities of Velsen and Beverwijk.

Teymour Radjabov of Azerbaijan’s win over Czech GM David Navara was not a case of sheer luck (see picture). Far from it. The Azeri, white in a King’s Indian, held a clear advantage throughout most of the encounter and was gradually increasing the pressure when Navara hastened matters by blundering away a piece on his 29th. He surrendered three moves later.

In the third A-group win of the day, Lady Luck did play an important part. The player who profited from her smile was Sergei Karjakin of the Ukraine and he was extremely happy about it. His victory -with white in 37 moves from a French Defense- over Dutch champion Anish Giri put an end to a disastrous tournament start of two losses in as many rounds ( see picture).

“It was not an easy game,” Karjakin said afterwards. “It is never easy to recover from a defeat, especially after losing twice at the start of a tournament.” He admitted, however, that Giri had offered a helping hand by “making the very bad move (see diagram) 20. … f5 creating a lot of weaknesses” and went from bad to worse sacrificing an exchange a few moves later. The young Dutchman resigned on his 37th.

The four other games in group A were all drawn with Gata Kamsky of the U.S. and Vassili Ivanchuk of the Ukraine being the first to leave the tournament hall after 30 moves from a Queen’s Pawn game. People in the audience thought Ivanchuk had the better play as he was pacing up and down the A-group podium with a blissful smile on his face but experts knew better. “He’s simply thinking about something he likes – dames, or a good dinner, who knows,” one of them explained. “Besides, the position is dead drawn.” As it turned out, he was right. Holland’s Loek van Wely and Azerbaijan’s Vugar Gashimov took a little longer, splitting the point after just 23 moves in an uneventful English game.

Boris Gelfand of Israel and Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov tried for 35 moves but failed to disturb the balance in an Anti-Nimzo-Indian, while last year’s winner Hikaru Nakamura of the U.S. and Fabiano Caruana of Italy took 42 moves from a Gruenfeld to agree to a draw.

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