The Week in Chess

Veselin Topalov won the final game to finish against Hikaru Nakamura to lead the 3rd Sinquefield Cup on 2/2. Topalov sacrificed a pawn to get the two bishops and Nakamura was soon in trouble. Topalov was very much better for a very long time and finally converted in a rook and pawn ending.

Alexander Grischuk played the 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 variation he has played extensively in blitz chess including against his opponent Viswanathan Anand and soon got a very large advantage. Grischuk got into serious time pressure but survived to win. This is surprisingly Grischuk's first win against Anand in 12 years of classical chess. They first met in 2003. A relief for Grischuk and Anand (alongside Caruana) starts with 0/2.

The main excitement was the huge joint time scramble between Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen. Caruana had the advantage on the board but only seconds on his clock. Carlsen started with much more time but consumed time trying to find tricks. Caruana blundered with about a second on his clock for his final move before time control (he was unsure how many moves there were to make) and both just made the time control with Caruana immediately having to resign.

Levon Aronian got a comfortable draw with black against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Anish Giri had some small pressure against Wesley So but accurate calculation produced liquidation to a draw.

Round 2 standings: Topalov 2pts, Giri, Vachier-Lagrave, Aronian 1.5pts, Nakamura, Carlsen, Grischuk 1pt, So 0.5pts, Anand, Caruana 0pts.

Round 3 pairings: So-Grischuk, Aronian-Giri, Carlsen-Vachier-Lagrave, Nakamura-Caruana, Anand-Topalov.