-Nalchik R3: Karjakin beats Aronian, Grischuk takes over lead

After a marvellous start of 2/2 Levon Aronian was held by Sergey Karjakin, who announced earlier this week that he will play for Russia in the near future. Main reason is the less reward for the big results the Ukrainian team achieved in last few years, for example winning the 2004 Olympiad.

By IM Robert Ris

It doesn’t look like this big news affects Karjakin’s play, outplaying Armenian’s number one in an Anti-Marshall after the latter made a few inaccuracies. Grischuk managed to defeat Rustam Kasimdzhanov and is currently the sole leader with 2½/3. The third round showed a lot of exciting chess. One doesn’t see four decisive results so much anymore these days, while we shouldn’t forget to mention that the other three games were also interesting to follow for the audience.

In line with his solid chess style, Etienne Bacrot reacted with the solid 12.d5 after Peter Svidler went for the Chigorin Variation of the Ruy Lopez. According to current theory, this riskless approach doesn’t promise White anything special, which was proved once more by Svidler. On move 36 the players agreed to a draw in a position where both couldn’t hope for anything more.

The f3-Grünfeld is still one of Shakh Mamedyarov’s favourite pet lines. During the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, the Azeri was shocked by a 21-move loss against Igor Kurnosov and accused the Russian of cheating during the game. This time, his opponent Gata Kamsky decided not to fall into his preparation, and deviated with 7…Nc6 from the aforementioned game, accepting a rather passive position. With 15.Qe5! Shakh went for a pleasant ending thanks to his space advantage. Nevertheless, the ever-tough American defended accurately and so the game ended peacefully.

Grischuk: the new leader after three rounds

So far it is not the tournament of Vassily Ivanchuk. Yesterday he lost quite unfortunately in a spectacular game against Svidler, while in the first round he got nothing with White against Bacrot. Also in this third round the Ukrainian genius couldn’t pose Boris Gelfand any serious problems in a Slav with 4.e3 Bf5. In this kind of positions White’s main trump lies in the advantage of the bishop pair. After opening the centre with the standard 11…c5 and 13…e5, Ivanchuk moved his pawn majority forwards, but Gelfand was perfectly in time to counter with 21…Be3! In the game the players went for a repetition of moves, but it seems that Ivanchuk could have continued with the surprising 29.h3!, creating some nasty tricks against Black’s king, leading to a slightly inferior rook ending.

Well, time to have a look at the decisive results. Tournament leader Levon Aronian faced with Black a harmless looking Anti-Marshall. The Armenian was the first one to deviate from his rapid game one month ago against Carlsen in Nice, but again found himself soon in a worse position. Both players didn’t show their best play, but it mostly affected Aronian who mishandled a drawish rook endgame to finish it off with a huge blunder.

[Report by: Chess Vibes]