The Week in Chess

The FIDE Grand Prix goes into Tuesday's final round with Fabiano Caruana and Boris Gelfand back in the joint lead following the most decisive round of the event yet.

Caruana defeated a clearly struggling Leinier Dominguez-Perez with a calm performance. "Considering my tournament situation I decided to experiment a little bit. After move 15 Iwas already seriously worse. 9.Nb5 was probably too ambitious." (9.Nf3 was probably better). Caruana brought home the point easily enough.

Boris Gelfand also had a relatively straightforward day when he won a Catalan straight out of the opening "I just blundered the transposition in the opening" Radjabov after which [white's knight ended up on d2 rather than c3 accelerating his play down the c-file] black's position is extremely unpleasant.

Peter Svidler took most of the interest early on when he first thought for 40 minutes over 14.. Nh5 after 14.Qe2. Karjakin said he was banking on 16.Ne3 and this turned out not to work after which Svidler was winning. However finding the kill was certainly not easy. Svidler thought he was just winning after 17...Nxg2 although 17...Nd4 was perhaps the better way. 23.Qf4+ Kg2 24.Qe4+ was the computer preference but both 23...Rad8 and 23...Ne6 were also very dangerous. After a long think 23...Bd6 24.c3! Svidler took the draw. Obviously very cross with himself and Karjakin had an extremely lucky escape.

Alexander Grischuk played the fairly outrageous 5...Nh6 in the Semi-Slav the kind of move Boris Gelfand would take as a "personal insult" was how he described it. But it did at least force one of the world's great theoreticians Rustam Kasimdzhanov onto his own resources. Grischuk thought 20.Rhe1 careless as he then generated huge play on the kingside and he broke through there to win in only 13 more moves.

Hikaru Nakamura said he was seeing very little clearly in his game against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and was fairly lucky that the game ended in such a quick draw.

Evgeny Tomashevsky finally won a game in an extremely sharp struggle against Dmitry Andreikin, not his usual preference but he did have the better of it throughout and was finally winning after a time scramble to reach first time control.

Round 10 Standings: 1-2 Caruana, Gelfand 6pts 3-6 Karjakin, Nakamura, Tomashevsky, Svidler 5.5pts 7-8 Grischuk, Radjabov 5pts 9-10 Mamedyarov, Kasimdzhanov 4.5pts 11 Andreikin 4pts 12 Dominguez 3pts

Round 11 Pairings. Tuesday 14th Oct. 2hrs earlier than other rounds 9am UK time: Mamedyarov-Kasimdzhanov, Radjabov-Nakamura, Svidler-Gelfand, Andreikin-Karjakin, Caruana-Tomashevsky, Grischuk-Dominguez