Dmitry Andreikin had a sleepless night before playing Anish Giri in the final round of the Tashkent Grand Prix. Winning such a strong tournament obviously meant a lot to him. In the end a draw was enough and he knew this by the time he finished his press conference as Jobava vs Mamedyarov and Vachier-Lagrave vs Nakamura had both been drawn.

Andreikin took on Anish Giri who was not at all happy with his result in the event getting more and more down as things went wrong in the tournament. Today things went well for Giri as he more than equalised against Andreikin but his 25...Na6 (25...Ne8!) allowed Andreikin to get a draw. A fine recovery from Andreikin who said he played more normally in Tashkent after being too aggressive in Baku.

"At least I didn't score as badly as I feel." Giri

Game of the day was a very sharp Benoni between Baadur Jobava and Shakhriyar. Both seemed to be happy with the opening and they played it well. Jobava seemed to overestimate his position and thought he was winning with 22.a3 but even the superior 22.Qb3 (or 22.Bxg6 followed by Qb3) were by no means clear. Jobava collected his thoughts and went for a draw, if Mamedyarov was better it was unclear exactly how he should prove it and the game finished in a draw.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was better against Hikaru Nakamura after a well prepared Ruy Lopez. Vachier-Lagrave missed a number of opportunities to be much better if not winning. 21.fxe5 and 24.Qb5 (neither player understood this computer move at first but something safe like 24.Bd4 was also better than 24.Nd6) Nakamura's 27...Rac8 was inaccurate (27...f6!) and 28.Bf4 might have left him struggling. In the end the players seemed happy with the draw.

Sergey Karjakin beat a clearly struggling Rustam Kasimdzhanov who said after the game he thought for the end of Baku and this entire tournament he'd done everything wrong. He was clearly not happy with the entire state of his chess. Today he was ground down.

Dmtry Jakovenko was another player who was clearly just really unhappy with how he'd played in Tashkent and today he was gradually outplayed in a rather strange opening that probably doesn't have a name. He just played a few inaccuracies and in a position that was starting to get tricky blundered a basic tactic to lose a pawn. He didn't put up much resistance after that. Caruana seemed relieved this was all over and was content to be leading the Grand Prix series in spite of not playing all that well, especially in Tashkent. Although he was reasonably pleased with today's game.

Teimour Radjabov played a TN in a well known line of the English which he'd had before. Gelfand found a decent reply to his 18.a4 novelty with 18...Qb6 and they quickly traded to a draw.

Gelfand said: "Horrible. One of the worst tournaments I have played. In the middle of the tournaments, blackouts, blunder after blunder." He now travels to Moscow to play the Petrosian Memorial starting on Tuesday but he had hope: "Last three games I played normal chess. Hopefully I am back."

Final Round 11 Standings: 1 Andreikin 7pts 2-3 Nakamura, Mamedyarov 6.5pts 4-7 Vachier-Lagrave, Caruana, Karjakin, Jobava 6pts 8 Radjabov 5.5pts 9 Giri, 5pts 10 Jakovenko 4.5pts 11-12 Kasimdzhanov, Gelfand 3.5pts

Grand Prix Standings after 2 events (Source: Wiki page on FIDE Grand Prix) 1 Fabiano Caruana 230 (2 events) 2 Hikaru Nakamura 207 (2) 3 Dmitry Andreikin 190 (2) 4 Boris Gelfand 170 (2) 5 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 160 (2) 6 Sergey Karjakin 157 (2) 7 Teimur Radjabov 100 (2) 8 Alexander Grischuk 82 (1) 8 Peter Svidler 82 (1) 8 Evgeny Tomashevsky 82 (1) 11 Baadur Jobava 75 (1) 11 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 75 (1) 13 Rustam Kasimdzhanov 50 (2) 14 Anish Giri 40 (1) 15 Dmitry Jakovenko 30 (1) 16 Leinier Dominguez 10 (1)

Next major tournament the Petrosian Memorial starts with round 1 in Moscow on Tuesday 4th November 3pm local time 12pm GMT.

Tashkent FIDE Grand Prix 2014 (11)

Mark Crowther (Sun Nov 2 18:05:00 2014)