Tata Steel 2022 Round 10: Grandelius Wins his First Game, Carlsen Still Ahead
While the World Champion is still on the top after an indifferent game against Karjakin in Round 10 of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, Rameshbabu and Grandelius gave us the “best show in town”, and won against Vidit and Dubov respectively.
Nils Grandelius won his first game of the tournament in a spectacular battle against Daniil Dubov. During the game, Grandelius could win in a million ways but did not, where later Dubov, a piece down, could force a draw but decided to play for a win instead and then lost after all!
On the Republic Day of India, the two Indian GMs faced each other and had an “interesting” game as Pragg said afterward. The 16-year-old chess prodigy sacrificed a pawn against his compatriot and seemed to have pretty good compensation for it. After holding on to the pressure, Vidit made a terrible mistake on move 33 and eventually lost the game.
Another interesting but also “strange” game in the words of Esipenko, had the Russian GM with the reigning Tata Steel Champion. Esipenko and Van Foreest exchanged their way into a well-known equal position out of the Italian opening, but under severe pressure, Van Foreest failed to find an only move, and Esipenko didn’t hesitate and made maximum use of black’s pinned rook to win the game.
The next decisive game was Caruana-Rapport. After probably missing an intermediate move by Rapport in the middle game Caruana never got back into the fight and he conceded shortly after the time control. “I think this is my first win in a classical game against Fabiano Caruana” Rapport happily said after the match.
The other three games were easily ended in a draw. Shankland and Mamedyarov had a balanced position from the beginning and they drew after 29 moves. A well-known repetition of moves in the Ruy Lopez led to a draw in 18 minutes in the game between Karjakin and Carlsen. Duda on the other hand managed to build some pressure against Giri’s center but it never turned into something serious.
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