The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen virtually guaranteed victory in the Zurich Chess Classic after a quick draw with black against Viswanathan Anand. Nakamura and Gelfand drew a little while later. Carlsen's closest challenger Levon Aronian went down to a very rare defeat in the Marshall Defence to the Ruy Lopez against Fabiano Caruana. This gives Carlsen a two point advantage over the field going into the five round rapid event on Tuesday and it's inconceivable anyone can catch him.

Anand allowed Carlsen to repeat his Berlin Defence from the world chess championship and after 11.d4 he had no advantage whatsoever and steered quickly to a draw. The players would have had to play a rapid game if they'd immediately agreed a draw so instead they blitzed out some moves in the totally drawn ending until they reached move 40.

Hikaru Nakamura and Boris Gelfand reached a position of dynamic equality in the Sicilian and repeated to draw in 21 moves. An additional rapid game was played which was won by Gelfand but again the quality, especially of Nakamura's opening, was rather poor.

The final game to finish was the only decisive one and a bit of a surprise. Caruana beat Aronian in a Marshall Defence to the Ruy Lopez an occurance that not even Aronian could remember happening before. Aronian made a number of poor defensive moves in a position which whilst tricky he should have held and went down to lose in 66 moves.

Final Classical Standings (points doubled from normal) Carlsen 8pts, Aronian 6pts, Caruana 5pts, Anand, Nakamura 4pts and Gelfand 3pts.

A full tournament of rapid games, with reverse colouts of the original pairings, will be played on Tuesday. Rounds start every hour from 12pm GMT at a time control of 15 minutes plus 10 seconds a move. Carlsen's two point lead is almost bound to be too much for anyone to overcome.