The Week in Chess

The sixth round of the Superbet Chess Classic saw wins for two of the three leaders. Alexander Grischuk took advantage of a mistake by Constantin Lupulescu while they were still in theory. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov beat Levon Aronian in a pretty well known line where Aronian went wrong pretty fast after Mamedyarov's novelty. The third leader going into the round was Wesley So, his advantage was not quite enough for a win against Anish Giri.

Grischuk beat Lupulescu in a Sicilian Richter-Rauser. 17...Bb5? led to a win for black in the game Stefansson-Filipenko from 2001 but 18.Qe1! (instead of 18.Be2 which is about equal) led to a significant advantage for white and he brought home the full point in 37 moves.

Mamedyarov produced the novelty 18.Rfe1 against Aronian in a well known position in the Ragozin Defence and after 19...Bd7? (19...b5 looks like a good equalising option for black and 19...Qd4 seems playable). The mystery is why they ended up here as the finesse 16...b6 17.Bd4 Nxe3 rather than 17...Nxe3 scores better for black and looks the cleaner equaliser.

Deac-Radjabov saw a safe choice against the Berlin by Deac as white and a fairly dull draw. MVL escaped with a draw against Caruana after misremembering the theory and going very wrong, 18.Rg5 is theory, 18.f4 Nxf4 19.Rg5? is just bad (19.Rg3 has to be played with a roughly) balanced position. Caruana quickly returned the favour, 22...Qf6 is winning for white, his 22...Nd3? turned out only to be equal and a draw by repetition soon followed. Wesley So won a pawn as white against Giri but it didn't prove to be enough to win in the end.

Round 6 Standings: 1st Grischuk 4pts, 2nd Mamedyarov 4pts, 3rd So 3.5pts, 4th Deac 3pts, 5th Caruana 3pts, 6th Radjabov 3pts, 7th Giri 2.5pts, 8th MVL 2.5pts, 9th Aronian 2.5pts, 10th Lupulescu 2pts.

Round 7 Pairings: Radjabov-So, Lupulescu-Deac, Aronian-Grischuk, Caruana-Mamedyarov, Giri-MVL.