Tata Steel round 4 report

Report of round 4

A fine technical victory with white over Gata Kamsky of the U.S. in fourth-round action brought Armenia’s Levon Aronian back on top of the standings in Grandmaster Group A of the 74th annual Tata Steel Chess Tournament at Wijk-aan-Zee Tuesday. The world’s second highest ranked player was level with Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, who headed the field as the sole leader at the outset of the round but had to settle for a draw with black in a hard-fought Berlin Wall game against Fabiano Caruana of Italy.

Referring to his defeat at Carlsen’s hands the day before, Aronian expressed his joy at finding himself “on the other side today. This time it was me who was pressing, and even though I also managed to let my opponent get away, in the end he was the one to make the final mistake.”

“It feels great, especially with the rest day ahead. On the whole, I think I’m doing alright. I mean, apart from yesterday, when I was playing badly …It is so eventful, this edition of the tournament! Normally, I win three games in a whole year. Here, I win three times in the first four rounds,” said Aronian, whose victory earned him the daily 500-euro “Piet Zwart Prize,” funded by the municipalities of Velsen and Beverwijk.

Carlsen, meanwhile, had the worse play in his encounter with Caruana. If he is to break Gary Kasparov’s Elo-record of 2851 points, as was suggested in a French chess publication recently, he’ll need more than the kind of draw with which he came away on Tuesday.

“Carlsen is going to suffer,” predicted Dutch champion Anish Giri, who was watching the Norwegian’s performance on a monitor in the press room after he had agreed to a quick draw in his own game with white against last year’s Tata winner Hikaru Nakamura of the U.S.

“Caruana has a clear advantage,” Giri evaluated the position after Italian’s 29th move, only to see Caruana propose a draw a mere five moves later. “Why offer a draw? The computer said you were vastly better,” Giri asked Caruana indignantly when the latter joined him in the press room. “Was I? I may have had some chances at one point, but it wasn’t that clear at all,” came the reply. “Anyway, a draw against Carlsen always is a good result.”

Carlsen seemed to agree. “My play wasn’t great today,” he admitted. “I did something wrong … well, I was worse, though I felt it may not have been as good for him as it looked.” The second Berlin Wall game in Tuesday’s round produced a clear-cut win for Sergei Karjakin of the Ukraine, who had lost his games in the first two rounds, recovered with a resounding victory over Giri in the third and notched up another full point against David Navara of the Czech Republic in the fourth.

“Two wins in a row,” a relieved Karjakin told reporters after the game. “You’ll understand I’m in a great mood. Actually, with the queens off the board so quickly, as is usual in this opening, chances for a draw are high and normally, he should have agreed to a draw by repetition. But after we had repeated moves two times, he decided to try for more. He should have been more careful. But he went too far and my position gradually became better and better,” Karjakin said. After 60 moves Navara resigned the resulting pawn ending.

The other games of the round were all drawn, with most attention going to the encounter between Vassili Ivanchuk of the Ukraine and Holland’s Loek van Wely. Playing black in a Catalan, ‘Lucky’ Loek seemed to be in for a rough ride but found a nice way out sacrificing a bishop. ‘Chukie’s mistake was (see diagram) 25.h4? Had he gone 25.Rc1 instead, he would have prevented Van Wely’s 25…d4!, which was the introduction to the sacrifice. That was fun, to be sure – for Van Wely and his Dutch fans in the audience, that is – but even more fun was Chukie’s subsequent reaction.

The Ukrainian, clearly disgusted over his own dismal performance, sadly shook his head, groaned audibly while signing his score sheet, then tried to rip the hair from his scalp and finally left the tournament arena after a nasty karate kick against the door guarding the players’ exit.

The other games ended more peacefully. Teymour Radjabov of Azerbaijan sacrificed a rook to obtain a perpetual check against Israel’s Boris Gelfand after 30 moves from a King’s Indian. Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov and Azerbaijan’s Vugar Gashimov took a bit longer. Their Queen’s Gambit resulted in a Queens ending that lasted 55 moves before Topalov realized that his extra pawn was insufficient for a win.

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