Magnus Carlsen won the Tata Steel chess tournament with 10/13 after managing to draw against Anish Giri in the final round. Carlsen played a variation of the King's Indian Saemisch as black that doesn't have a particularly good reputation something somewhat confirmed by the game today. Carlsen's 13...c5 was probably an error but 19...Rf7 eventually got him enough counter-play to hold the draw. Since last year's Wijk aan Zee Carlsen has lost just one game, to Caruana, won all the tournaments and set ratings records. He also matched Kasparov's 1999 total with 10/13. He is exuding self-confidence going into the Candidates in March. Giri gradually played better as the tournament progressed and for chess fans his schooling can't finish soon enough so he can concentrate on the game which is his ambition this year. Levon Aronian threw away yet another half point with an amazingly lax performance towards the end of his game against a badly out of form Fabiano Caruana. Still the draw was enough to give Aronian clear second place and some hope his best form is returning in time for the Candidates. Caruana was in bad form throughout a surprise as the last year has seen almost constant improvement from him to close in on a place at the very top of the game. Viswanathan Anand had one of his best tournaments of recent years and with a few more events to come there is hope we may see him play himself into to something like his best form. However he played pretty badly in the final round against Wang Hao who only really wanted to draw and the event to finish. In the end Wang Hao scored a win that took his score to a respectable 6/13. Anand still tied for 3rd. He also played the game of the event. "I think the best game is clearly Aronian-Anand, that's one for the ages." - Carlsen Sergey Karjakin fell out of contention for first prize after his hurtful loss to Magnus Carlsen in Round 8 but finished on +3 and he was happy with his play in the final round against Loek van Wely whose position went downhill very fast after 17...h5 in the Dragon. Hikaru Nakamura finished an eventful tournament on 7/13 after drawing with Pentala Harikrishna who had a very respectable finish on 6.5/13. Hou Yifan too had a respectable finish with 5.5/13 and gained rating points. 1 point against the top 6 and 4.5 vs the bottom 7 told the story of her first elite tournament. She would like to do this again. She drew a theoretical Marshall Ruy Lopez against Peter Leko who finished on +2 and by the end looked quite close to his best and he thought the result pretty much par for the course. He was slightly disappointed with missed chances in the first half. GpA Final Standings: Carlsen 10, Aronian 8.5, Anand, Karjakin 8, Leko 7.5, Nakamura 7, Harikrishna 6.5, Giri, Wang Hao, van Wely 6, Hou Yifan 5.5, Caruana 5, L'Ami 4 and Sokolov 3. GpB 1st= Naiditsch, Rapport 9/11. GpC Brunello 11/13.

75th Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee 2013 (13)

Mark Crowther (Sun Jan 27 19:58:00 2013)