The Week in Chess

Wesley So survived a lost position to draw against Pavel Eljanov and hold on to the lead in the Tata Steel Masters after 7 rounds. In time trouble Eljanov failed to find 30.Nf3! but this was not at all the strangest thing that happened in Round 7.

Sergey Karjakin will be relieved to have won a long grind against Levon Aronian but only after failing to exploit an extraordinary lapse from his opponent in the opening that should have cost a piece. 10...f6? 11.c4 would have forced something like 11...Bxf2+ but it would not have been enough compensation.

Magnus Carlsen played the Colle System and allowed his opponent Anish Giri to reach complete equality. Then Carlsen started to outplay his opponent and 56.Rc8+ would have forced mate in 3 or a decisive material advantage. Instead Carlsen played another continuation which also looked to be winning but turned out not to be and Giri escaped with a draw.

Wei Yi played a very sharp variation of the Najdorf against Loek van Wely and quickly set problems his opponent couldn't handle. 13...Nc5 was already losing for black and although after some inaccuracies Van Wely had some reasonable drawing chances he couldn't hold.

Baskaran Adhiban won his second game in a row with black beating Radoslaw Wojtaszek in a fluctuating struggle where he had the advantage, then was in a losing position before finally getting a decisive edge in the end.

Dmitry Andreikin tried 1.c3 but only ended up in an inferior Exchange Queen's Gambit for his troubles against Harikrishna. Game drawn after 43 moves. Ian Nepomniachtchi is far, far from his best and after being too crudely aggressive with white in the opening was worse for most of the rest of the game against Richard Rapport before the game was drawn.

Gawain Jones and Markus Ragger lead the Challengers with 5.5/7 half a point clear of Ilia Smirin.

Round 7 Standings: 1st Wesley So 5pts 2nd Carlsen, Eljanov, Wei Yi 4.5pts 5th Giri, Karjakin 4pts 7th Aronian, Harikrishna, Adhiban, Andreikin 3.5pts 11th Wojtaszek 3pts 12th Nepomniachtchi 2.5pts 13th Rapport 2pts 14th Van Wely 1pt

Round 8 Sunday 22nd January 2017 at 12:30pm UK time: Aronian-Giri, Rapport-Carlsen, Van Wely-Nepomniachtchi, Harikrishna-Wei Yi, Adhiban-Andreikin, Eljanov-Wojtaszek, Karjakin-So.