Wijk aan Zee, Round 1: Carlsen, Aronian and Giri Win

The world's #1 and #2 players increased their rating edge over their closest competitors by starting the tournament with wins. Magnus Carlsen used Ulf Andersson's old anti-Hedgehog line to obtain a slight but persistent edge, and when Vugar Gashimov got mistakenly excited about his own tactical possibilities Carlsen won material and converted the winning opposite-colored bishop ending.

Levon Aronian defeated Sergey Karjakin with Black in a non-mainline Closed Ruy. The position became surprisingly complex in a hurry, and Aronian negotiated the complications better than his opponent.

Finally, Anish Giri won with the black pieces against Boris Gelfand in some kind of oddball Slav. Gelfand's pawn sac in the opening looked pretty interesting to me, and in return his bishop pair seemed to offer some chances. As things went, though, Giri was able to absorb the pressure a bit at a time, and finally went on to win a long double rook ending. The champion of Reggio Emilia has continued his winning ways!

The other four games were drawn, so Carlsen, Aronian and Giri lead the A group after the first round. In the B group, Harikrishna, l'Ami, Nyzhnyk and Lahno were the first-round winners, while I'll note that Timman drew with second seed and current European champion Potkin. Finally, top seeds Turov and Sadler led the pack in the C group, with Adhiban, Tikkanen and Goudriaan also winning.

There's lots of good coverage on the tournament site, while TWIC's report on the first round is also worth a look.

Here are the round 2 pairings for the A group:

• Topalov - van Wely
• Gashimov - Kamsky
• Ivanchuk - Carlsen
• Aronian - Nakamura
• Caruana - Karjakin
• Giri - Radjabov
• Navara - Gelfand

Reggio Emilia, Round 10: Giri Draws the Game and Wins the Tournament

Life is good for Anish Giri, just 17 and a half years old and winning elite tournaments! Reggio Emilia 2011/12 is his first major success, but it's not going to be his last. After a bumpy -2 start, Giri scored four wins and a draw in rounds 5-9 to enter the last round tied for first with Hikaru Nakamura and Alexander Morozevich.

With White against Fabiano Caruana in the last round, he played very safely and the game was draw in just 28 moves. That seemed like a potentially dangerous strategy, with Nakamura and Morozevich playing the ice-cold Vassily Ivanchuk and Nikita Vitiugov, respectively, but it worked out perfectly. Ivanchuk ground Nakamura down on the white side of a Berlin, and it was only fitting that as Nakamura had ruined Ivanchuk's tournament at the end of the first cycle, Ivanchuk repaid the favor at the end.

Anything was possible in the Vitiugov-Morozevich battle, and in a long tactical sequence it was Morozevich who had the objectively better position. In mutual time trouble he first missed a likely win, and after further inaccuracies wound up in a lost endgame an exchange down. He had his chance, but couldn't cash it in.

Thus Giri took clear first with 16 points (on the 3-1-0 scoring system used in this event), one more than Caruana, Morozevich and Nakamura. Ivanchuk finished with 12 and at least a nice finish, while Vitiugov concluded his first super-event with 8 points and a last-round win.

Games, with comments, here.