(Photo taken from the official site of the tournament)
Today’s pairings
GM Carlsen Magnus 2872 1/2 GM Aronian Levon 2809
GM Radjabov Teimour 2793 0-1 GM Gelfand Boris 2740
GM Grischuk Alexander 2764 1-0 GM Ivanchuk Vassily 2757
GM Kramnik Vladimir 2810 1-0 GM Svidler Peter 2747
Aronian got a comfortable equality with Black against Carlsen, 15…c6 was a novelty preparing the a6-a5 push and many pieces got eliminated towards move 30. Draw wasn’t very far away from that point :).
Radjabov didn’t get much out of the opening against Gelfand and attempted to create an attack with …f5 push. Probably the immediate 17…Qa3 with the idea of Ba6 was a little better, but in any case looks like white didn’t have time to push the pawns on the kingside as Black created some positional threats on the other side.
Grischuk, playing against the Accelerated Dragon of Ivanchuk chose a rare line 10.Nd5 and got a fairly active position with some space advantage. 14…Nd3 appears to be a novelty when Black hunts for material, while 16.Qe2 should give white a small advantage. The R and N endgame is even if only both sides weren’t in time pressure and wanted to win 🙂
Kramnik chose a rare line 14.Kc2 in Svidler’s Gruenfeld and Black answered with a novelty – 14…Ne5, instead of the usual 14…Na5, thanks to which white got a large space advantage. Black got an unpleasant and passive position and didn’t manage to find a good plan.
Carlsen and Aronian share 1st-2nd with 5.5 points, Kramnik is 3rd with 4.5.
Today’s pairings
Round 9 on 2013/03/25 at 14.00
GM Kramnik Vladimir 2810 – GM Carlsen Magnus 2872
GM Svidler Peter 2747 – GM Grischuk Alexander 2764
GM Ivanchuk Vassily 2757 – GM Radjabov Teimour 2793
GM Gelfand Boris 2740 – GM Aronian Levon 2809