The Week in Chess

There was a lively start to the London Chess Classic but only one decisive game, Anish Giri's win against Veselin Topalov.

In a topical variation Giri played directly with 11...Re8!? and 12...e5 with his 15...Bd3, 16...Ba6 more or less equalising. 18...Bxd4 was far from the only move but was with the idea of 20...Qxd4 putting pressure on white.

Topalov found the excellent 21.a5 and 22.Ra4. Up to here Giri was a long way ahead on the clock but used up most of his time on the next moves, 23...Nxc1 (23...N7c5!) was an error giving white the advantage. Topalov turned down 27.Qxe5 trading into a solid endgame advantage instead going for complications with 27.Qb4. 32.Bf3 looked better than it was and led to the decisive error 33.Qxa7? (33.Bxe4 should be about equal) after which 33...Nxf2! led to a decisive attack. A big turn around in Topalov's time trouble.

Hikaru Nakamura looked on course to defeat Alexander Grischuk on the black side of a Berlin Defence but got into severe time pressure after taking a long time to decide on 25...Kg8 and then was forced to try and repeat to get closer to time trouble 34.Rh7 lost all the advantage and the game finished in a repetition.

Magnus Carlsen drew comfortably against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on the black side of a Sveshnikov. 16...Qc8!? was a new and interesting move. more or less forcing white to quickly seek a draw by perpetual check.

Michael Adams had a comfortable draw against Viswanathan Anand as did Levon Aronian against Fabiano Caruana.

In the British Knock-out Championship final Nick Pert and David Howell had a short draw in game one.

Round 1 Standings: 1st Giri 1pts 2nd= Grischuk, Vachier-Lagrave, Caruana, Anand, Adams, Aronian, Carlsen, Nakamura, Hikaru 0.5pts 10th Topalov 0pts

Round 2 Pairings: Giri-Adams, Aronian-Anand, Carlsen-Caruana, Nakamura-Vachier-Lagrave and Topalov-Grischuk