The Week in Chess

The result of the Baku FIDE Grand Prix was thrown wide open with the leaders Fabiano Caruana and Boris Gelfand both being defeated in round 9 of 11 of the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku. Caruana, Nakamura, Karjakin, Gelfand, Radjabov and Svidler are tied on 5/9 with Kasimdzhanov and Tomashevsky just half a point back. All to play for almost everyone but Dominguez after this round.

Fabiano Caruana has been playing almost continuously since June and in fact flies almost directly from Baku to Tashkent for the next Grand Prix. Today he looked very weary. He admitted his loss to Grischuk was coming. "Most of my games have been pretty bad."

Alexander Grischuk played a suggestion of Anish Giri 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.f3 c5 4.dxc5 e6! and immediately Caruana went into a half hour think, far too long as he admitted. Caruana was on top in a very sharp struggle but he let the advantage go and with both players down to about 4 minutes for 8 moves Caruana blundered decisively with 32.Kg1 (32.Kf1=) allowing Grischuk to execute an idea he'd seen a few moves before with 32... Rd2 33.Ra2 Nxg2! after which it was all over.

Boris Gelfand had already gone down to a bad loss against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Mamedyarov's preparation left him with a pleasant advantage almost for the first time in the tournament. Gelfand played a Benoni structure a tempo up but it didn't make it easy to handle and after allowing 23.b5 Gelfand seemed to not believe in his chances anymore and his position quickly collapsed.

Hikaru Nakamura admitted he achieved absolutely nothing against Rustam Kasimdzhanov's Berlin Defence. Nakamura thought for a long time over his 22.Bg3 before spotting that 22...Rxe4 couldn't be played. He turned out to be right in thinking that the refutation 23.Rd8 Bd7 24.Re1 with the win of material maybe wasn't that easy to see and he won this way. Instead 22...Ne6 and the game should be drawn.

Dmitry Andreikin and Leinier Dominguez have been horribly out of form in this tournament and they demonstrated this again with a strange game together. Andreikin sacrificed a piece with 18.Nxd5 but after 20...Nb8! he had nowhere near enough compensation. However Dominguez started missing things, a lot of things, he listed them after the game, but he was still winning until 32...Qd3 which allows white near equality. "After move 40 I was just so depressed I just couldn't think anymore." Dominguez who went on to lose.

Peter Svidler pointed to 12.c3 as a poor move against Evgeny Tomashevsky after which he had no advantage. In the end black probably didn't have enough of an edge to justify continuing so he allowed a repetition on move 22.

Teimour Radjabov isn't yet a natural player of the English Opening and allowed a quick trade into a drawn endgame. Probably neither was all that unhappy.

Round 9 Standings: 1-6 Caruana, Nakamura, Karjakin, Gelfand, Radjabov, Svidler 5pts 7-8 Kasimdzhanov, Tomashevsky 4.5pts 9-11 Grischuk, Mamedyarov, Andreikin 4pts 12 Dominguez 3pts

Round 10 pairings Monday 11am BST: Kasimdzhanov-Grischuk, Dominguez-Caruana, Tomashevsky-Andreikin, Karjakin-Svidler, Gelfand-Radjabov, Nakamura-Mamedyarov