The Week in Chess

30 year old Baadur Jobava has been the star of the Tashkent Grand Prix so far with his games and press conferences being by far the most interesting. Today he was the only winner and he joined Hikaru Nakamura and Dmitry Andreikin in the lead on 5/8 going into the final rest day on Thursday (it really is the rest day this time, I had it wrong initially yesterday).

Jobava hit the mark completely with his opening choice against a struggling Boris Gelfand. Jobava allowed Gelfand to build a huge pawn centre but dragged his opponent into the kind of position where he felt uncomfortable. The players didn't comment on 14.Qg3 but this might have been the point where black became better (14.Qg2 allows Gelfand to centralise the queen next) and black quickly had all the chances. 19...Kb8 was questioned by Jobava (19...f5) but it's not clear it was better than played. 20.Bc2 was a "horrible move" according to Gelfand and his position quickly became unplayable as Jobava opened the centre and took the e-file after which the game was quickly over. Gelfand looked thoroughly dejected as one might feel after such a going over.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Sergey Karjakin drew a theoretical 4.f3 Nimzo-Indian where Karjakin's preparation took him to a drawn position. He decided to play on rather than go for perpetual but questioned why later as he only ended up with chances to lose although the position remained equal and was drawn.

Dmitry Andreikin played a Gruenfeld sideline where his opponent Maxime Vachier-Lagrave clearly understood it better. Andreikin just gave in and repeated.

A pragmatic Hikaru Nakamura was surprised by the Ragozin Defence from Teimour Radjabov and quickly just played for a draw rather than risk anything.

Anish Giri talked about how frustrating it was to play against Dmitry Jakovenko's ultra-solid opening repertoire although he added playing this was not to everyone's taste as black. They repeated a line where black sacrifices his queen for a blockade. Giri needed to try to push on the kingside immediately to have any chances of breaking this (even then it's not certain he can) and the game drifted to a draw.

Fabiano Caruana admitted to another poor game today. He got nothing from the opening and nearly succeeded in getting himself into trouble before making the draw against Rustam Kasimdzhanov.

Detailed notes from the press conferences in the PGN file.

Round 8 Standings: 1-3 Andreikin, Nakamura, Jobava 5pts/8 4-5 Vachier-Lagrave, Mamedyarov 4.5pts 6-9 Radjabov, Jakovenko, Karjakin, Caruana 4pts 10 Giri 3.5pts 11 Kasimdzhanov 2.5pts 12 Gelfand 2pts

Round 9 pairings Friday 31st October 9am GMT: Kasimdzhanov-Gelfand, Radjabov-Caruana, Karjakin-Nakamura, Jakovenko-Mamedyarov, Vachier-Lagrave-Giri, Jobava-Andreikin,