Wijk aan Zee, Round 2
The game of the round was Levon Aronian's win over Fabiano Caruana. Aronian obtained an advantage with White in a Symmetrical English of sorts (maybe it's better classified as a sort of Gruenfeld), and Caruana gave up a pawn to release the bind. It started out as an extra d-pawn, but turned into an extra a-pawn at the end of the first time control. In due course that pawn made it to a7, and with Black's counterplay at an end and White about to win big material Caruana gave up.
That was Aronian's first win of the tournament, and indeed there are no players who have won their first two games. There are, however, two players who have lost both games: Boris Gelfand and Arkadij Naiditsch. Richard Rapport was unsuccessful in round 1 with 1.b3, but against Gelfand in round 2 he trotted out the Budapest Gambit. Surprisingly, he beat him pretty convincingly - or at least played very convincingly in the first time control. Having achieved a winning position he wasn't as efficient as he could have been, but he converted the advantage all the same. Arkadij Naiditisch also lost his second game, getting crushed by Anish Giri on the black side of a Bogo-Indian.
Three games were drawn: So - Nakamura, Dominguez - van Wely, and Karjakin - Harikrishna. (No present for Karjakin on his 24th birthday.) One other game especially worth mentioning was played in the B-Group (the Challengers Group). Benjamin Bok won spectacularly against Yu Yangyi and won the prize for the game of the round. You can find that game, along with all the A-group (Masters' Group) games here (albeit without annotations today). (Tournament site here.)
Standings After Round 2:
1-5. So, Aronian, Karjakin, Nakamura, Giri 1.5
6-9. Harikrishna, Dominguez, Rapport, Caruana 1
10. van Wely .5
11-12. Gelfand, Naiditsch 0
Round 3 Pairings:
- van Wely - Giri
- Harikrishna - Dominguez
- Caruana - Karjakin
- Rapport - Aronian
- Nakamura - Gelfand
- Naiditsch - So
Reader Comments (1)
Giri-Naiditsch makes me wonder why they keep on trying against this plan with Bd3 and h4 in the Bogo Nbd2. Isn't it just really good for White? There are already quite a lot of nice games in this line...