Tata Steel 2022 Round 6: Giri defeats Caruana with black, Carlsen shares the lead with Vidit and Mamedyarov
Match-day 6 of the 2022 Tata Steel Chess Tournament ended with a great victory of GM Anish Giri against the 2018 Challenger Fabiano Caruana with the black pieces. Carlsen won against Rapport to join the leaders, and Karjakin forced Van Foreest to resign after an exemplary game.
The Ambassador of the Tournament, Anish Giri had an eventful game against Caruana, who tragically blundered a rook and lost the game. “We were both in huge time pressure and made a lot of mistakes,” Giri said after the game, adding: “The quality of play is really low all over the place—so maybe chess is just very hard”.
The World Champion Magnus Carlsen also found himself in a slightly better position which suddenly turned into a winning position against Rapport. “Yeah, I guess I was in a lot of danger [against Grrandelius yesterday]... I really really needed the win today after throwing away some opportunities the last round.” Carlen said afterward.
The last decisive game of Round 6 was Karjakin against Van Foreest. Commentators talked about a positional masterclass by the Russian GM, and Van Foreest couldn’t do anything to prevent this outcome (even when he exchanged his bad bishop). Karjakin confessed in his after-game interview that when he started running in the morning, he started playing a lot better!
GM Nils Grandelius seemed to have kept his cheerful spirit from Round 5, and welcomed Maamedyarov on the board with a big smile! Their game was peaceful and in the end, Grandelius did not bother to recapture Mamedyarov’s queen but instead accepted his draw offer.
GM Andrey Esipenko didn’t have such a restful game, with Dubov pressing him until the very end. Esipenko has shown a great amount of resilience in his last games, and “steals” the draws from worse positions, like in Round 6.
One of the tournament leaders, GM Vidit Gujrathi faced the Polish GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda in a balanced game. Both players tried to spice up the position, but the game ended in a draw after 36 moves.
16-year-old Rameshbabu is having a fascinating tournament so far, showing not only an excellent level of preparation but also a fighting spirit against the world’s elite. In Round 6 Pragg faced the American GM Sam Shankland in a well-prepared Sicilian, which ended in a draw.
For Round 7, the Indian prodigy will play his first classical game ever against the World Champion. Watch R7 with us, on Saturday the 22nd, at 13:00 UTC: https://chessarena.com/broadcasts/11117
