The Week in Chess

Fabiano Caruana defeated joint leader Ding Liren whilst Magnus Carlsen won impressively against Pavel Eljanov. The pair lead the event with 5/7. At the moment Carlsen has played mostly against players in the bottom half of the table whilst Caruana has played the top 6 already.

Caruana played 11.Nh4 in a theoretically important position and obtained a big advantage over Ding out of the opening. However he admitted that he "spoiled it" and Ding had "very good drawing chances". 41..Qd7 is assessed as almost equal. Ding's 43...Qxa5 was the decisive error probably missing that 44.Rxd3 Rxd3 45.Rb8+ wins on the spot for Caruana.

Magnus Carlsen scored yet another powerful win, this time against Pavel Eljanov. Wittingly or not Carlsen's 10...g5 transposed to game 9 of the Petrosian-Botvinnik match of 1963. The position remained strategically complex. Eljanov gave up a piece for compensation but Carlsen found his way through the complications to a win.

Anish Giri's slow start is behind him after a victory over Loek van Wely took him within a point of the lead. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov beat Hou Yifan after the latter missed an important shot on the run up to first time control. Wei Yi's reputation as a dangerous tactician has maybe made his opponents avoid the sharpest struggles. He has drawn all his games so far including against Wesley So today. David Navara and Sergey Karjakin was an interesting draw in a semi-slav. Evgeny Tomashevsky against Michael Adams was a fairly tame draw.

Joint leaders Baskaran Adhiban and Aleksey Dreev met in round 7 of the Challengers Group with Adhiban winning in crushing style.

Round 7 Standings: 1st-2nd Caruana, Carlsen 5pts, 3rd-5th So, Giri, Ding Liren 4pts, 6th-10th Hou Yifan, Wei Yi, Karjakin, Eljanov, Mamedyarov 3.5, 11th Navara 3, 12th Tomashevsky 2.5, 13th-14th Van Wely Adams 2pts.

Round 8 pairings: Round 8 Sun 24th Jan 12:30pm Karjakin-Carlsen, Adams-Eljanov, Giri-Tomashevsky, Hou-Van Wely, So-Mamedyarov, Ding-Wei Yi, Navara-Caruana.