Wijk aan Zee, Round 7
Levon Aronian's winning streak has stopped for the moment, but he continues to enjoy a full-point lead after a comfortable draw with Boris Gelfand in round 7. His closest pursuers, Anish Giri and Sergey Karjakin, both had the black pieces in their games as well, and neither came close to gaining the full point. Karjakin drew used an interesting (though perhaps unnecessary exchange sac) against Wesley So to obtain a kind of positional fortress, and So couldn't find anything better than to eventually return the material and coast in with a draw. Giri was even in some trouble against Fabiano Caruana, but Caruana couldn't figure out how to break through and had lost his advantage by the end of the first time control. Caruana has been playing some very long games, and may not have had the energy he needed for another successful push. (Here are the move totals for his games so far: 30, 58, 71, 108, 73 and 132 moves before the 43 move "brevity" in round 7. He may only be 21 years old, but playing games of that length will take something out of you no matter who you are.)
Three more players started the round a further half a point behind, and that's where they finished the round too. Caruana's and So's games were already mentioned, while Leinier Dominguez pressed Arkadij Naiditsch for 91 moves before splitting the point.
The next two score groups had a mini-match. The two players with 3/6, Hikaru Nakamura and Pentala Harikrishna, took on the two 2-pointers Loek van Wely and Richard Rapport, respectively. The 2-pointers both won: van Wely in a Classical Sicilian where Nakamura played a pseudo-Keres Attack with 6.g4, and Rapport won with yet another peculiar line - 5.Qf3 in a Classical Caro-Kann. All four players are now tied with -1 scores.
Monday was a rest day, and here are the round 8 pairings, with the players' scores in parentheses:
- Giri (4.5) - Aronian (5.5)
- Karjakin (4.5) - Gelfand (2)
- Dominguez (4) - So (4)
- van Wely (3) - Naiditsch (1.5)
- Harikrishna (3) - Nakamura (3)
- Caruana (4) - Rapport (3)
In the Challengers Group Baadur Jobava won again, winning very impressively against Yu Yangyi with his signature Nimzo-Larsen Opening. He has 6.5/8, giving him a half-point edge over Ivan Saric, who only drew his game. They have five games to go, unlike the Masters Group which is four rounds from the end.
Reader Comments (1)
Caruana played mainlines in his other games in Wijk aan Zee (at least if the opponent did the same), so opening-wise he hasn't really joined the Carlsen club or "did a Jobava"? He and Giri often played sidelines against each other (Pirc from Caruana at the Paris Grand Prix, a rare variation of the Queen's Gambit last year in Wijk aan Zee) - the likely reason is that they had the same coach and know their mainlines very well. Both worked with Chuchelov, Giri now started working with Tukmakow.
My Giri quote on the opening: "I managed to develop all of my pieces, but the wrong way - then I had to start all over again." This is translated from Dutch - I asked him (something I was always interested in) whether he prefers English or Dutch, he said it doesn't matter.