The Week in Chess

For the second year running the Tal Memorial had a blitz tournament as the curtain raiser and established the draw for the main tournament. Hikaru Nakamura took clear first place with 7/9 a clear improvement on his 4/9 the previous year. World Champion Viswanathan Anand came in second place with 6.5/9, both players were undefeated and the difference came down to Nakamura beating tail-ender Caruana and Anand only drawing. For Caruana this was the second year in a row he finished in last place, but he was 2nd in the main event encouraging for those who didn't do so well.

Magnus Carlsen was doing fine but his event became somewhat derailed in an exciting loss to Alexander Morozevich in Round 7 after which he drew in Round 8 and lost to Mamedyarov in the final round.

Vladimir Kramnik came third also improving on his showing last year. The players were allowed to choose their draw number this year in order they finished, last year the number was their placing. Nakamura chose 5 which means he has white in the first and last rounds, the same reasoning used by Karjakin in Norway (1st there 8th here) in a similar event. Vladimir Kramnik was the only player in the top 6 to choose to have 5 blacks in the main event. This is the first tie-break but it's interesting no-one else who had a choice thought this way.

Final Round 9 Standings: 1st Nakamura 7pts, 2nd Anand 6.5pts, 3rd Kramnik 5.5pts, 4th Gelfand 4.5pts, 5th Carlsen 4.5pts, 6th Andreikin 4pts, 7th Mamedyarov 4pts, 8th Karjakin 3.5pts, 9th Morozevich 3pts, 10th Caruana 2.5pts.

Draw Numbers chosen in order: Nakamura 5, Anand 2, Kramnik 7, Gelfand 3, Carlsen 4, Andreikin 1, Mamedyarov 6, Karjakin 8, Morozevich 10, Caruana 9

Tal Mem Rd1 Thur 13th Jun 12pm BST: Andreikin-Morozevich, Anand-Caruana, Gelfand-Karjakin, Carlsen-Kramnik, Nakamura-Mamededyarov. There is an all star commentary team for the English video including Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk.