Tata Steel 2022 Round 11: Giri loses to Van Foreest, Carlsen is 1.5 point ahead
Round 11 of the 2022 Tata Steel Chess Tournaments turned into a rollercoaster of emotions. Dubov has left the tournament due to covid, Calsen drew with Vidit and improved his chances dramatically to win for a record eight-time in Wijk aan Zee, Van Foreest won an almost perfect game against Giri, and two quick draws fueled a boomerang of comments on Twitter.
The round started without GM Daniil Dubov after testing positive for COVID-19 in a PCR test 2 days ago. With this run of events, Dubov’s remaining opponents, Rapport, Praggnanandhaa, and Carlsen, are assured of a full point in the next rounds. This means that after R11, Carlsen is 1.5 ahead and most likely to win Tata Steel for the eighth time. As Caruana said afterward: ‘It’s hard to imagine anyone else besides Magnus Carlsen winning the tournament’.
In his game, Carlsen came close to winning against Vidit, and maybe he even was at one point but in the end, and after a lot of exchanging, the Champion looked satisfied with the draw. “I made it a long game out of generosity,” Vidit said after the game
Van Foreest on the other hand had an exciting game against his compatriot Anish Giri. The two GMs found themselves in an ultrasharp Nimzo-Indian Sämisch, with Giri not being able to find the right defense and eventually losing the game. The ambassador of Tata Steel was closely following Carlsen to the top, but with the R11 result, Giri has no chances anymore of winning the tournament.
Another decisive game was Caruana-Rameshbabu, in which the Indian prodigy seemed to be a no match for the 2018 Challenger in the middle game. Caruana used his a-pawn as a perfect decoy for the white pieces on his way to the white king and won the game with ease.
A fighting draw was Grandelius against Esipenko. The Swedish GM rightly refused a piece sacrifice by Esipenko and moved to a better position. After a pawn sacrifice, Grandelius had a serious advantage but decided to accept the offered draw by his Russian opponent.
Another draw, but this time in only 10 moves, and without any excitement, had Duda and Shankland, with the last one not feeling very proud of it.
Karjakin and Mamedyarov followed the same strategy and repeated moves after a mere 23 moves. Twitter had a debate whether players who are known for their pre-arranged draws should be invited to tournaments like Tata Steel, with Tarjei bringing up a 2018 statement of Mamedyarov, admitting that pre-arranged draws just happen sometimes.
Watch R12 with us, on Saturday the 29th, at 13:00 UTC: https://chessarena.com/broadcasts/11117
