The Week in Chess

The second round of the Tata Steel Masters was a quiet affair with all the games drawn. The main clash of the day was between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. This was a difficult game with the players more or less on their own from the start after 1.g3. Carlsen might have been able to play for a win with 25.b3 according to the computer but with an exposed king a draw seemed a fair result.

Three players lost in round one and had white today and none seemed in the mood to play all that riskily. Michaeal Adams has a good recent record against David Navara but had to be careful to exchange to a drawn endgame. Anish Giri also played quietly against Ding Liren in a Slav/Semi-Slav and Pavel Eljanov drew solidly against Ding Liren.

Evgeny Tomashevsky seemed surprised by Shakhriyar Mamedyarov's 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c5 and was worse, possibly much worse before escaping with a draw. 23...Qd3 was certainly worth looking at. Loek van Wely played the Sicilian Dragon against Sergey Karjakin as he has before and a draw was agreed in 20 moves. Hou Yifan was worse out of the opening against Wesley So but gradually fortunes changed and So felt the need to give up a pawn. 38.g5 or 40.g5 are liked by the computers for Hou Yifan but in the end she couldn't make the extra material count.

Aleksey Dreev (who won the main event in 1995) and Baskaran Adhiban lead with B-Group with 2/2. One two draws today.

Round 2 standings: 1st-3rd Caruana, So, Ding Liren 1.5pts 4th-11th Carlsen, Karjakin, Mamedyarov, Navara, Tomashevsky, Wei Yi, Hou Yifan Van Wely 1pt 12th-14th Giri, Eljanov, Adams 0.5pts

Round 3 pairings: 18th Jan 2016 12:30 GMT: So-Karjakin, Ding-Hou, Navara-Giri, Caruana-Adams, Wei-Carlsen, Mamedyarov-Eljanov, Van Wely-Tomashevsky.