Veselin Topalov won the Zug Grand Prix by a point and a half from Hikaru Nakamura after a final round win against Sergey Karjakin. Topalov wanted a quiet game but completely failed to achieve that. Karjakin maybe was a bit better but he went a little mad going for the attack starting with 22...Qh8 ("I should not have played it" Karjakin) and after 25...f4?! was busted. This was the only decisive game of the final round.

This result puts Topalov at the top of the Grand Prix Standings after three events.

"My strong side was always the opening, this time I was getting absolutely nothing, sometimes clearly worse." "Honestly I feel happy, it's good, but the result I had I didn't really deserve because I think I was quite lucky in several games but I'm satisfied with my play."

Topalov said about his games in Zug, "they were fighting victories" but probably none would feature in any book he might write in the future about his career. Topalov goes on to the very strong Norway tournament next week as world number 4 his best in a long time. It will be interesting to see how he does there.

Nakamura vs Caruana also finished in a draw after a reasonably interesting game. Caruana - "My result wasn't so bad but my play was another story." Nakamura - "Over all I'm pretty happy with the way I played but not the way the results turned out perhaps. I think I got a little bit lucky against Morozevich and even yesterday [vs Mamedyarov who resigned in a playable position] to some extent. +2 can't complain at all, Veselin was on a different planet."

Rustam Kasimdzhanov survived a bad position against Peter Leko. Leko was very disappointed with his result (1 loss the rest drawn) as he felt he had 5 winning positions. Both he and Kasimdzhanov felt their clock management was a large part of their bad result.

Morozevich said that he "happily survived the finish, didn't die yet" and that he felt "really terrible since the last free day". He wasn't preparing and so was happy with a short theoretical draw. He said his illness was completely different to that in Biel and a "total coincidence". Ponomariov too having been surprised in the opening and having lost in the final round of his last Grand Prix was happy with the draw.

Alexander Morozevich finished with a comment that begged several questions that were not asked. Not sure why he brought it up, perhaps it was because Sutovsky was there for the final round supporting Kamsky, I hope nothing more.

"I also heard since May this anti-cheating commision with Mr Sutovsky going to start. I really hope that it will start working and maybe some measures for anti-cheating will also be taken already starting from the next Grand Prix. I think we all need it to play more quiet because the pressure going to be big and we just need to respect each other."

Final Standings: Topalov 8pts, Nakamura 6.5pts, Ponomariov, Caruana 6pts, Kamsky, Morozevich 5.5pts, Giri, Leko, Karjakin 5pts, Radjabov, Mamedyarov, Kasimdzhanov 4.5pts.

FIDE Grand Prix Zug 2013 (11)

Mark Crowther (Wed May 1 00:14:00 2013)