The Week in Chess

Dmitry Andreikin got himself a share of the Tashkent Grand Prix lead with Hikaru Nakamura after he defeated Sergey Karjakin whilst Nakamura just held on against Fabiano Caruana. Andreikin hadn't played since the Candidates until he played in the recent Baku Grand Prix and was awfully rusty there. Here he seems to be back to his best.

Andreikin tried the Torre variation and took things in an original direction. After 12 moves Sergey Karjakin was down to 20 minutes to make move 40 and admitted he didn't play well after that.

Nakamura tried to play it safe against Caruana's Nimzo-Indian, allowed almost instant equalisation and then after giving up a pawn could only try and hold on for a draw. Play remained difficult and Caruana eventually managed to lose his extra pawn and have to be accurate to draw. A game that won't make either's best game compilations.

Probable game of the day and certainly press conference of the day was the draw between Baadur Jobava and Dmitry Jakovenko in a Nimzo-Indian. Jobava said he was trying to play it safe with his solid choice but soon he again made play very difficult for both sides. I've rounded up some of the lines in the PGN file, the players agreed a draw with 4 moves and about 20 seconds each to make time control.

Boris Gelfand seemed to get a substantial advantage out of the opening against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's Gruenfeld after surprising him with the Bf4 variation but play remained complex and in fact he had to be careful to draw in the end.

Shakriyar Mamedyarov beat Rustam Kasimdzhanov in a messy Vienna game where fortunes swung back and forth but in the end Kasimdzhanov missed something and lost quickly.

Anish Giri tried a long line against Teimour Radjabov's Berlin Defence. Radjabov took over an hour to get to a known position and then blundered. 25...f5? but 26.g5 returned the favour (26.Rxc7 was very dangerous) leading to an ending where white was pressing but it wasn't easy to see how he would break through and he didn't.

Detailed notes in the PGN from all the press conferences except the last game to finish between Nakamura and Caruana which was messy and the players didn't seem very happy with their play either.

Round 6 Standings: 1-2 Nakamura, Andreikin 4pts 3-5 Mamedyarov, Jobava, Vachier-Lagrave 3.5pts 6-8 Radjabov, Jakovenko, Giri 3pts 9-10 Caruana, Karjakin 2.5pts 11 Gelfand 2pts 12 Kasimdzhanov 1.5pts

Round 7 Pairings Tuesday 27th Oct 2014 9am GMT. Caruana-Gelfand, Kasimdzhanov-Nakamura, Radjabov-Mamedyarov, Karjakin-Giri, Jakovenko-Andreikin, Vachier-Lagrave-Jobava.