Boris Gelfand and Fabiano Caruana shared first place in the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku. Gelfand was satisfied with this result but pointed out he will have to follow it with two more good results in the series, Caruana said "I can't say it's bad to tie for first." but was really disatisfied with the level of his play.

Peter Svidler tried to surprise Boris Gelfand in a sideline of the Najdorf Sicilian "The moment I realised Boris is not surprised by this my hopes of getting anything diminished greatly" and indeed Svidler thought he had to be careful to steer the game to a draw.

Fabiano Caruana had a sharp struggle in a Ruy Lopez against Evgeny Tomashevsky where towards the end it seemed he might stand slightly worse. Tomashevsky himself pointed out that +1 against a field where he was the lowest rated player was a good result and in the final position where he accepted a draw he couldn't think of any ideas. Caruana's full assessment below and game annotated in the PGN.

The only winner today was Alexander Grischuk who took advantage of Leinier Dominguez' collapse in form to eventually score a victory but only after the position was not very good for him. Grischuk scored 3/4 in the final rounds, it was a turn around that occurred when he "moved to the hotel with windows". Detailed quote below and game annotated in the PGN.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was faced with a very sharp Queen's Gambit Accepted from Rustam Kasimdzhanov. This led to a very interesting struggle and a draw. I compiled a detailed set of notes in the PGN from their comments.

Teimour Radjabov tried to follow in Mamedyarov's footsteps with his choice of anti-King's Indian weapon against Hikaru Nakamura but he didn't quite get it right and the game quickly traded to a draw. According to Mamedyarov he should have tried 15.f4 not 15.b4.

Dmitry Andreikin finished the event with a rather disappointing draw against Sergey Karjakin. Karjakin traded into an ending that could have been nasty for him but 29.Kf3? (29.f4!) lost the advantage as he missed the 29...Ra8 30...Rd8 regrouping that relieved the pressure.

Final standings: 1-2 Gelfand, Caruana 6.5pts (155 Grand Prix points) 3-7 Tomashevsky, Nakamura, Grischuk, Karjakin, Svidler 6pts (82 Grand Prix points) 8 Radjabov 5.5pts (50 Grand Prix points) 9-10 Mamedyarov, Kasimdzhanov 5pts (35 Grand Prix points) 11 Andreikin 4.5pts (20 Grand Prix points) 12 Dominguez 3pts (10 Grand Prix points)

Next Grand Prix starts in exactly 1 week's time in Tashkent. Round times likely to be the same as in Baku, same time zone.

Below quotes and link to the PGN file with three games annotated with the player comments in quite a lot of detail.

Baku FIDE Grand Prix 2014 (11)

Mark Crowther (Tue Oct 14 17:28:00 2014)