The Week in Chess

Anish Giri defeated Vladimir Kramnik in the second round of the 80th Tata Steel Chess tournament. Giri won in a confusing game where Kramnik miscalculated starting with 26...Rxc3 (26...Rd6=) perhaps he didn't see until too late that his rook had no squares after 30...Bb4, he resigned shortly afterwards.

Magnus Carlsen scored his first win of the tournament when he out played Baskaran Adhiban from a very unpromising looking endgame with black. 25.Bf3?! was the start of white's troubles and after 26.a5 Bxc2 the game was already pretty much over. Adhiban must have thought his a-pawn was fast but it wasn't.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov steadily outplayed Hou Yifan on the black side of an Exchange Winawer French Defence. After first time control looked like Wei Yi would beat Peter Svidler and Fabiano Caruana would beat Gawain Jones but both players with the black pieces managed to hang on to draw. Matlakov-So and Karjakin-Anand saw piece exchanges and early draws.

There is a four way tie on 1.5/2 in the B-Group with Jorden van Foreest, Dmitry Gordievsky, Santosh Vidit and Anton Korobov.

Round 2 Standings: 1st Giri 2pts 2nd= Carlsen, Anand, Mamedyarov 1.5pts 5th= Caruana, Karjakin, Wesley So, Jones, Kramnik, Svidler 1pt 11th= Wei Yi, Matlakov, Adhiban 0.5pts 14th Hou Yifan 0pts

Round 3 pairings Monday 15th Jan 2018 12:30pm GMT: Kramnik-Hou Yifan, Svidler-Giri, Carlsen-Wei Yi, Jones-Adhiban, Anand-Caruana, Wesley So-Karjakin, Mamedyarov-Matlakov