The Week in Chess

The first round of the Tata Steel Masters was a relatively quiet affair with only Pavel Eljanov winning his game against Richard Rapport.

The first game to finish was that between Wesley So and World Champion Magnus Carlsen. So was surprised by Carlsen's precise choice of Slav variation and took the game into quiet waters and once queens came off a draw was inevitable. In truth this was a bit early for two of the favourite to meet and this result was widely predicted.

Richard Rapport tried a rare setup he'd used once before (12.0-0 departed from the game Abramovic-Rapport) against Pavel Eljanov. At first Rapport seemed to be doing well but after a couple of inexact moves (15...d3, instead 15...Ba6!? seems better and 18.Bc6?!, maybe 18...Nc6) the weaknesses he created in the opening came back to haunt him. Eljanov sacrificed the exchange leaving Rapport with a very passive position and quickly went on to win.

Baskaran Adhiban looked to be on the way to a debut win in the Masters group against Loek van Wely but a combination of good resistance from his Dutch opponent and some late inaccuracies meant that the game finished in a draw.

Sergey Karjakin's 6.a3 was a rare and not that impressive move against Anish Giri's Najdorf Sicilian. Giri had even faced the move in a blitz vs Harikrishna last April. Giri maybe had slightly the better of things at first but once Karjakin challenged on the b-file Giri had to be accurate in order to maintain the balance. Draw agreed on move 35.

Levon Aronian showed deep Marshall Ruy Lopez preparation in drawing with Harikrishna. Dmitry Andreikin didn't get very much against Wei Yi's Petroff. Radoslaw Wojtaszek's deeply prepared Gruenfeld with 4.Bf4 put Ian Nepomniachtchi under pressure to be accurate but he was up to the job.

In the B-Group there were wins for Benjamin Bok vs Tingjie Lei, Markus Ragger vs Jeffrey Xiong and Jorden van Foreest vs Erwin L'Ami.

Round 1 Standings Eljanov 1pt. Carlsen, So, Karjakin, Aronian, Giri, Nepomniachtchi, Harikrishna, Wojtaszek, Andreikin, Wei Yi, Van Wely and Adhiban 0.5pts Rapport 0pts

Round 2 Sunday 15th Jan 2017 12:30pm UK time: Aronian-Wei Yi, Nepomniachtchi-Andreikin, Carlsen-Wojtaszek, Giri-So, Rapport-Karjakin, Van Wely-Eljanov, Harikrishna-Adhiban.