The Week in Chess

The FIDE World Cup saw a really dramatic day during the first game of the third round of the FIDE World Cup. Favourites Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk were defeated and in one of the last games to finish Julio Granda Zuniga was pressing for a win but down to the increment when he blundered an entire piece by transposing the correct order of moves he had calculated.

Levon Aronian was coughing during the game and reportedly hasn't been well but certainly not using this as an excuse so far. Aronian was defeated by Evgeny Tomashevsky who described the win as the best of his career so far.

Tomashevsky said the early critical stage was between moves 15-20, 18.Nxe4 was an error (18.Nd3) and 19.Qb3 a further one, 22.f3 was accompanied with a draw offer but Tomashevsky said he didn't see the point of playing chess if you were going to agree a draw in such positions. Aronian desperately clung on 31...Qg4+ (31..Raf8) wasn't quite precise but the ending was horrible for Aronian and Tomashevsky thought 39.Kf2? left no hope at all. Aronian has a tough task to win with black in game 2.

Le Quang Liem put Alexander Grischuk's Gruenfeld under sustained pressure and the Russian cracked under time pressure. Hikaru Nakamura said he'd had a miserable time playing the same Exchange Ruy Lopez Adhiban tried in the past and gradually outplayed his young Indian Opponent. Boris Gelfand was quietly impressive in defeating Alexander Moiseenko. Gata Kamsky refuted a rather over-excited Jon Ludvig Hammer sacrifice with very little difficulty. Maxime Vachier Lagrave defeated Leinier Dominguez Perez after offering an early draw because he's another player not feeling so well. Peter Svidler surprised Teimour Radjabov with a slightly delayed Exchange King's Indian. Radjabov just took far too much time to reply and then took passive options after that and was crushed. Pretty much his problem ever since the start of the Candidates, a real crisis of confidence. The final decisive games of the day was wince inducing, Julio Granda Zuniga put Anish Giri under a lot of pressure but started to get down to the increment and just when the computer gave him a two pawn advantage he transposed moves in a variation and lost a piece.

Elsewhere in the drawn games Kramnik quickly took the game to a draw after making an error in the opening against Alexander Areshchenko. Alexander Morozevich was winning somewhere against Nikita Vitiugov but after sacrificing the exchange could only draw in the end. Yi Wei held Shakhriyar Mamedyarov very easily with black in a Nimzo-Indian. Daniil Dubov was surprised in the opening by Anton Korobov and immediately steered to a draw.