The Week in Chess

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave scored his second consecutive win in the Tashkent Grand Prix to lead alone on 2/2. He beat Rustam Kasimdzhanov on the white side of a Berlin Defence with 4.d3. Vachier-Lagrave had a nice edge from the opening and put the pressure on, It does seems there was one possibility of escape for black with 20...Rxd3 with a minimal disadvantage but after 20...Nb3 Kasimdzhanov was just a pawn down for no compensation.

Baadur Jobava is one of the most exciting players in the world to watch but his high risk style runs a lot of risks in a field as strong as this. Today it looked like Fabiano Caruana would take his 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Be2!?! apart. Caruana won Jobava's Queen for Rook and Minor piece but maybe he could have done even better with 11...Ne7. Caruana found ways to make life extremely difficult but after 44...Ra8 (44...Rh1!?) the game was just equal and soon drawn.

Anish Giri looked to have a large advantage against a quick playing Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in a Semi-Slav but it wasn't all that easy in reality and may have been preparation. Stockfish wants to play 29.Kd4 which may lead to a white advantage after major complications but that wasn't easy. In the end the players drew by repetition.

Boris Gelfand had a comfortable but small edge in a Queen's Indian against Sergey Karjakin but as played it was never more than that and the game was drawn on move 40.

Dmitry Jakovenko got a nice endgame pull to torture Teimour Radjabov with in an English but couldn't quite build it into a win.

The first game to finish was that between Hikaru Nakamura and Dmitry Andreikin. It may be Andreikin was better prepared because after his 18...Kf7 novelty (Fressinet won with 18...c4+ against a weaker opponent) the players repeated to draw.

Round 2 Standings: 1 Vachier-Lagrave 2pts 2-3 Nakamura, Andreikin 1.5pts 4-8 Karjakin, Gelfand, Radjabov, Giri, Jakovenko 1pt 9-12 Mamedyarov, Kasimdzhanov, Caruana, Jobava 0.5pts

Round 3 Thursday 23rd Oct 2014 10am BST: Mamedyarov-Gelfand, Nakamura-Giri, Caruana-Andreikin, Kasimdzhanov-Jobava, Radjabov-Vachier-Lagrave, Karjakin-Jakovenko.