Candidates tournament at the half

The 7th round of the FIDE World Candidates Tournament 2016 was held today at the DI Telegraph in Moscow, Russia.

Hikaru Nakamura and Veselin Topalov opened with the Slav defence. White expanded on the queenside while black pushed in the center. At one point Topalov decided to make the things interesting and sacrificed a piece. But later he missed a neat 31…Qf5! (idea …Rd3 and …Qh3) 32.Re3 Qd7. After Nakamura was allowed to play 33.Kh2 black position simply collapsed.

Viswanathan Anand easily equalised with black against Anish Giri. Following the massive exchanges the players agreed to a draw after completing obligatory 30 moves.

Levon Aronian was well prepared to meet Sergey Karjakin’s Kings-Indian attack. Quick push of the a-pawn got white thinking a bit longer than usual. Karjakin jumped 13.Ng5 “in the hope to attack”, but black’s response in 13…Ra6 was “absolutely brilliant”. Black freed his game and perhaps even missed a more active continuation in 16…Bf6. After the many exchanges the game was drawn on move 31.

Peter Svidler aggressively attacked Fabiano Caruana with the English opening. The American GM was spending a lot of time searching for a way to weather the storm. White sacrificed a piece and got the black king out for a walk. Caruana was forced to give the material back and white even emerged with an extra pawn. But after several inaccuracies by Svilder, Caruana was able to equalise and save the game.

Round 7 results:
Svidler – Caruana 1/2
Karjakin – Aronian 1/2
Nakamura – Topalov 1-0
Giri – Anand 1/2

After seven rounds of play Karjakin and Aronian are joint leaders with 4,5 points each. Anand is sole third with 4, followed by Caruana and Giri on 3,5 points. Svidler and Nakamura share sixth place with 3 points each, while Topalov has 2 points.

Round 8 games are on schedule for 20th March at 15:00 Moscow time:
Svidler – Karjakin
Caruana – Nakamura
Aronian – Giri
Topalov – Anand

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