The Week in Chess

Leader Levon Aronian had to be accurate to hold Anish Giri and maintain his lead after 8 rounds of the 76th Tata Steel Masters Group. The other five games were decisive and all won by the player with the white pieces. There are rest days on Wednesday and Friday either side of the Master's group trip to the High Tech Campus Eindhoven on Thursday.

Levon Aronian never thought he was in danger of losing to Anish Giri in spite of having to defend an inferior rook ending. Giri felt that Aronian was inaccurate at one moment making life difficult for himself but didn't think he missed any chances either.

Sergey Karjakin ground down Boris Gelfand but only after a lengthy rook ending having secured a near winning position earlier on (18...b4). Karjakin very much under the radar is only half a point off the lead.

Leinier Dominguez Perez was very happy with his quick win against Wesley So. Dominguez felt 16...g6 (16...d4!) was already possibly the decisive error. 19.Rh7 was a brilliant idea, 20...Qe7 lost instantly (20...Bxf3 21.Rxg7+ was highly unlikely to save in the long term).

Loek van Wely won a rather strange against Arkadij Naiditsch, he first of all dropped an exchange with 18...Ra7?! but was lucky enough to pick up a pawn in return and almost full compensation. 30...Qd8 was a waste of time and black's position was very difficult afterwards. Eventually Van Wely broke through.

Fabiano Caruana was faced with a very unusual variation of the French Rubinstein variation by Richard Rapport. It's alright playing these lines if you're playing well but Rapport clearly isn't. Caruana's early reaction of 7.Bf4 maybe wasn't the best and after 9.Bb5 9...Qd5 may even give black an advantage. After that it was one way traffic to a Caruana win.

Pentala Harikrishna blew away Hikaru Nakamura who hasn't been playing well but surely the American will still be absolutely mortified to allow 30.Nh5! a pretty but hardly difficult tactic to see to lose immediately.

In the B-Group Benjamin Bok made his final GM norm with a draw over the struggling Etienne Goudriaan. Sabino Brunello defeated Baadur Jobava allowing Ivan Saric to take the lead after a win against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. They have games on Wednesday.

Round 8 Standings: Aronian 6pts, Karjakin 5.5pts, Caruana, Dominguez, Giri 5pts, Harikrishna, Van Wely, So 4pts, Rapport, Nakamura 3pts, Gelfand 2pts, Naiditsch 1.5pts

Round 9 Thur 23rd Jan 2014 1pm GMT: Rapport-Giri, Nakamura-Caruana, Naiditsch-Harikrishna, So-Van Wely, Gelfand-Dominguez, Aronian-Karjakin.