The Week in Chess

In the Challengers Group Robin van Kampen beat Sam Sevian in a Berlin in the only decisive game of the section.

Fabiano Caruana was the first winner in the Masters section of the Tata Steel Chess tournament of 2015. Caruana outplayed Ding Liren in a Gruenfeld where he tempted forward white's pawns and eventually these became weak and the whole position collapsed.

Vassily Ivanchuk was pretty much gifted a win after a complete collapse by his opponent Baadur Jobava just after first time control. Ivanchuk thought his 20.c5 was too risky (20.Qb3 was more solid) and perhaps he should have tried to force a draw by repetition by attacking Jobava's Queen with his knight. 25...b5 allowed Ivanchuk to liquidate into a more or less equal position. At first time control the position was balanced but Jobava needed to be careful as Ivanchuk had an active king. 42...Ra4? was a terrible error as 43.Rxa4 forced a winning ending which was "not so difficult for a good Grandmaster" to calculate according to Ivanchuk. Jobava then realised he was losing and resigned. White will stop the a-pawns with his king and running c and f pawns will decide in his favour. (you can rewatch Ivanchuk's interview).

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave beat Hou Yifan on the white side of a French Defence. Hou had a very reasonable opening but instead of taking queens off with 21...Qxc7 she went for complications which she did not evaluate correctly and was forced to ruin her king-side pawn structure only a few moves later with 24...Qf6. After that black's position was close to lost.

Van Wely felt he had a comfortable draw with black against Teimour Radjabov. He did mention that he missed a move in time trouble that fortunately, for him, didn't cost the game.

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen's comments on Giri's "cowardly" safety first play, no-matter how lighthearted he thought they were, added some tension to their round 1 clash. Carlsen chose a Modern System with 1...g6 against 1.d4 which may be a risky thing to repeat but worked very well as a one off against Giri who only had some vague general knowledge about the opening. 9.c5 looked like a major test of the formation but Carlsen's very precise 9...dxc5 10.dxe5 Nxe5! seems to have pretty much equalised. This at least was the conclusion of the players after the game. The game was drawn on move 30 in a king and pawn ending.

"Yes, it was a little experiment in opening. Unfortunately it was not as exciting as some of us had hoped for, and it was a quite forced liquidation to a draw." said Carlsen in an interview in Norwegian: http://www.tv2.no/2015/01/10/sport/magnus-carlsen/6434858. Carlsen's manager Espen Agdestein had already promised some opening experiments in the tournament.

Wesley So and Radoslaw Wojtaszek drew a complex fluctuating struggle that saw an endgame where both missed strong continuations (57.Rf5! for white and 65...Rxd5 for black).

Ivan Saric missed an opportunistic tactic with 24...c6! which would have caused Levon Aronian a lot of problems in an otherwise fairly dull Italian game.

In the Challengers Group Robin van Kampen beat Sam Sevian in a Berlin in the only decisive game of the section.

Round 1 Standings: 1-3 Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave, Ivanchuk 1pt, 4-11 Carlsen, Aronian, Giri, So, Wojtaszek, Radjabov, Van Wely, Saric 0.5pts, 12-14 Ding Liren, Jobava, Hou Yifan opts

Round 2 Pairings: Sunday 11th Jan 2015 12:30 GMT Van Wely-Wojtaszek, Carlsen-So, Aronian-Giri, Caruana-Saric, Hou-Ding, Jobava-Vachier-Lagrave, Radjabov-Ivanchuk.