The Week in Chess

The Zug Grand Prix tournament went into it's first rest day after seeing all 6 games drawn in round 4. Although this certainly wasn't without effort or action.

Rustam Kasimdzhanov played a knight sacrifice against Veselin Topalov in the Classical King's Indian which seemed to catch the Bulgarian by surprise. However 13.Nf5 has appeared in a couple of strong players games Antic-Markovic and Shomoev-Ganguly that appeared in TWIC. Topalov played the logical break 14...d5 and things became very complicated. However Topalov was definitely worse and both players seemed to believe Kasimdzhanov was winning somewhere but time trouble meant he had to keep things relatively simple and Topalov held the draw.

Hikaru Nakamura said he was playing for a draw after missing several of his opponent's moves in a row just out of the opening against Gata Kamsky. However Nakamura did win a pawn and went into a lengthy rook ending but never generated serious chances.

Peter Leko repeated his Ragozin experiment against Teimour Radjabov and was definitely at least slightly worse for most of the game but in the end he held a tricky rook and pawn ending.

Alexander Morozevich was very unhappy at the result of his opening against Sergey Karjakin and he called his 23.h5 anti-positional and the game eventually entered a tricky bishop and pawn ending that was drawn. It seems however that with 33.Kc3 (presumably with the idea of penetrating with the king) Morozevich missed a fleeting chance for a win.

Anish Giri equalised with the Ruy Lopez rather quickly against Ruslan Ponomariov who admitted that he was still somewhat wiped out by his 7 hour game in round 2 and so hadn't prepared so much. The game was drawn in 37 moves.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov played a rather spectacular looking rook sacrifice against Fabiano Caruana's Gruenfeld but it was still good enough only for a draw.

Round 4 Standings: Morozevich, Ponomariov, Topalov 2.5Pts, Caruana, Kasimdzhanov, Mamedyarov, Karjakin, Giri, Nakamura 2Pts Kamsky, Radjabov, Leko 1.5Pts.

Rest day Monday 22nd April 2013.

Round 5 Tuesday 23rd April 2013 1pm BST: Caruana-Kasimdzhanov, Karjakin-Mamedyarov, Giri-Morozevich, Leko-Ponomariov, Kamsky-Radjabov, Topalov-Nakamura.