The Week in Chess

Levon Aronian won the Tata Steel tournament with 8/11, a point and a half clear of Anish Giri and Sergey Karjakin. Aronian had already secured first place with a round to go and didn't seem too upset when he blundered to a loss in the final round against Loek van Wely. Tournament director Jeroen van den Berg confirmed that there will be a 77th edition of the tournament next year. Aronian said that he was happy with the travelling bringing the game to the Dutch public and that he wouldn't mind if there were less rest days next year. The Norway chess tournament later in the year will also be in several venues and no doubt there will be lessons to be learned from that experience too.

Aronian blundered in time trouble against Van Wely about which he said "My most interesting game was with Van Wely but unfortunately I spoiled it." "It wasn't my intention to get into time trouble but I did in the end" and "I blundered mate in one, of course it's disappointing but those things happen." He said his new attitude was "Less adventure, more play for an advantage" and that "I already have too much confidence I don't really need more than that." He was somewhat cagey about the coming Candidates saying that in the last two cycles he was "Not really stressed but I really wanted to play well. Now I don't."

Van Wely looked reasonably happy to beat Levon Aronian with black in the final round even though his attitude suggested he had rather got away with a less than perfect performance. He acknowledged that whilst he was happy with his aggressive choice of opening he had then misplayed it. Aronian, probably for the first time in the tournament got into time trouble and once the complications arrived he looked extremely nervous and eventually fell to a pretty blow 38...Bd4+ (other moves leave white considerably better) which forced mate for black.

"It would have been nice if it would have started the same way it ended" was Arkadij Naiditsch's verdict on his 2014 Tata Steel appearance. He met Richard Rapport in the final round and he seemed to be "in even worse shape than me" according to Naiditsch who exploited some terrible play to win extremely easily, he even had the luxury of not having to be terribly accurate at the end. Naiditsch compared it quite correctly to his own personal nadir in the event against Pentala Harikrishna. But Naiditsch didn't hide the disaster of a run of 9 losses from 12 games (including Bundesliga in December) and perhaps half jokingly said "it was a personal best" .... "maybe it's time to switch a job."

Caruana was also not happy with his tournament which finished with a draw against Wesley So "I lost a lot of games and didn't play so well".

Hikaru Nakamura felt that finally in the last two or three games of the event he started to play well and that this bodes well for the strong Zurich tournament next week. Today he had the better of a draw against Anish Giri where they played an old line of the English with "crazy" complications according to Giri. Giri said he was in good shape in the event and that perhaps in retrospect he should have played more riskily and maybe won more games at the expense of a loss or two.

Boris Gelfand too was reasonably happy with his finish even if it didn't save his tournament, he beat Pentala Harikrishna in a pawn ending.

Leinier Dominguez was also pleased with his over all performance apart from his two losses where he felt he played badly. Today he was winning against Sergey Karjakin but said he was so tired he didn't manage to calculate the endgame properly.

Ivan Saric won the B-Group with 10/13 a point and a half clear of Jan Timman and Baadur Jobava. Timman's result is especially note-worthy as he doesn't play much and this must be one of his best results in many years, and it might have been even better as he spoiled a couple of wins in later rounds.

Final Standings: Aronian 8pts/11, Giri, Karjakin 6.5pts Caruana, Dominguez, So 6pts, Harikrishna 5.5pts, Van Wely, Nakamura 5pts Gelfand 4.5pts, Rapport, Naiditsch 3.5pts.