The Week in Chess

The 10th round of the Tata Steel Chess tournament 2014 saw four wins for black in the Masters group including the decisive one for Levon Aronian over Leinier Dominguez Perez which won him the tournament with a round to go. This is Aronian's fourth victory in the event one short of Anand's record.

Aronian was asked if he had changed anything to produce this victory and said he hadn't changed much but "maybe I'm putting in more work before the games, that pays off" and today he felt 17.Rfe1 "shouldn't be the best move for him" (17.a4). Aronian played quickly and confidently and Dominguez got into quite bad time pressure, probably as Aronian suggested, because he didn't like his position. A couple more inaccuracies and Aronian brought home the full point and first place with 8/10 two points clear of the field. He plays Loek van Wely with the white pieces in the final round and will surely be pushing for a win to crown such a fine performance. Especially as Van Wely went completely wrong in a level middle-game against Gelfand and lost horribly after tieing his own pieces up.

Fabiano Caruana played strangely in the opening against the struggling Arkadij Naiditsch, got into time trouble and eventually walked into a huge tactic. Naiditsch only looked slightly relieved to score his first win.

Richard Rapport played the Nimzo-Larsen with 1.Nf3 and 2.b3 and got Hikaru Nakamura to use lots of time. Sadly for him Nakamura got a good position and once the tactics started the American was well on top and won reasonably comfortably.

Anish Giri played the unusual 12.Qd3 (a couple of players tried it) in a Catalan against Sergey Karjakin and it didn't work out so well, he had to show some care but quickly mananged to liquidate to a draw. Pentala Harikrishan against Wesley So was a Berlin where white showed nothing and a drawn position was reached quickly.

Garry Kasparov visited the event today doing some press conferences and signings. He also did a spot of commentating, noting how much things had changed. He noted that only Loek van Wely was left from the A-Group from his time but that it was also nice to see Timman in the B-Group again.

Ivan Saric won the Challengers section and has won a place in next year's masters. Baadur Jobava his closest rival went down to a loss to Dimitri Reinderman and he is now level with Jan Timman.

Round 10 Standings: Aronian 8pts/10, Giri, Karjakin 6pts, Harikrishna, Caruana, Dominguez, So 5.5pts, Nakamura 4.5, Van Wely 4.0, Rapport, Gelfand 3.5, Naiditsch 2.5.

Round 11 Sunday 26th Jan 11am GMT: Nakamura-Giri, Naiditsch-Rapport, So-Caruana, Gelfand-Harikrishna, Aronian-Van Wely, Karjakin-Dominguez.