Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee 15-31 January 2016

[John McKenna]

Very nice Knight manoeuvre at the end of the Anne Haast game.

Ann Haast's QN went 11.Nb1xc3... 17.Nc3-d5... 19.Nd5-f6+... 20.Nf6-g4 and that ended the game.

Nino Batsiashvili's QN went 2... Nb8-c6... 8... Nc6-a5... 9... Na5-c4... 11... Nc4xb2 and lead to a loss.

There's a certain symmetry in that and in the way in which Nisipeanu lost to Haast.

[JustinHorton]

Absolute miracle escape from Mickey.

[Mick Norris]

5.5 - Carlsen
5 - Caruana
4.5 - So, Giri, Ding

Challengers
6.5 - Baskaran
6 - Safarli
5.5. - Dreev

Rest day in both tomorrow (with final rest day on Thursday for both, the Masters go to Utrecht on Wednesday)

[Mick Norris]

Round 9 Tues 26th Jan 2016 12:30pm GMT: Caruana-Karjakin, Wei-Navara, Mamedyarov-Ding, Van Wely-So, Tomashevsky-Hou, Eljanov-Giri, Carlsen-Adams.

Round 8 Standings: 1st Carlsen 5.5, 2nd Caruana 5, 3rd-5th Wesley So, Giri, Ding Liren 4.5, 6th-10th Navara, Wei Yi, Karjakin, Mamedyarov, Eljanov 4, 11th Hou Yifan 3.5, 12th-13th Tomashevsky, Van Wely 3, 14th Adams 2.5.

[LawrenceCooper]

Caruana-Karjakin & Wei-Navara identical after 9 moves but not a position to get too excited about.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Wei Yi took a route one approach (castled queenside, rooks on h and g files and threw his kingside pawns forward). He has sacrificed a piece on move 16 against David Navara and the engines (mostly) say it is a sound sacrifice and Wei Yi should win (currently at move 20.h6, but Navara only has 10 minutes left to Wei Yi's 40 mins). Interesting position. Wonder when they deviated from their preparation?

(Ironic, given Loz's comment above about the position after move 9 - Caruana-Karajkin a bit more sedate.)

[In one line of Wei Yi's game, he gets about 6 pawns for a piece...]

[LawrenceCooper]

Wei Yi took a route one approach (castled queenside, rooks on h and g files and threw his kingside pawns forward). He has sacrificed a piece on move 16 against David Navara and the engines (mostly) say it is a sound sacrifice and Wei Yi should win (currently at move 20.h6, but Navara only has 10 minutes left to Wei Yi's 40 mins). Interesting position. Wonder when they deviated from their preparation?

(Ironic, given Loz's comment above about the position after move 9 - Caruana-Karajkin a bit more sedate.)

[In one line of Wei Yi's game, he gets about 6 pawns for a piece...]

I had hoped that my comment might lead to chaos ensuing in at least one of the games

[Barry Sandercock]

Wei Yi wins good attacking game.

[Steven DuCharme]

Carlsen is too good and should be barred from playing chess imo

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Carlsen is too good and should be barred from playing chess imo

I assumed he had won and looked at the live feed and saw that Adams might make another miracle save... (well, Carlsen will probably still win, but it would be an amazing save by Mickey).

[EDIT: Mickey just made a big mistake with 60...Nd6. 60...Nf6 might well have held.]

[MartinCarpenter]

Not sure if it would have been such a miracle - I know the computer was entirely unimpressed by the knight/g/h pawn combination but they had to be worth something in practice It did seem a rather impractical way to do things from Carlsen but maybe the other options weren't promising enough or something.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Adams might have got his swindle there, against almost any other player alive......

[Mick Norris]

Round 9 Standings 1st Carlsen 6.5, 2nd Caruana 5.5, 3rd-6th Wesley So, Wei Yi, Giri, Ding Liren 5 7th-9th Karjakin, Eljanov, Mamedyarov 4.5, 10th-11th Navara, Hou Yifan 4 12th-13th Tomashevsky, Van Wely 3.5, 14th Adams 2.5

[Mick Norris]

Round 10 - Wednesday the 27th Utrecht so starts half an hour later at 1 pm

Karjakin, S. - Adams, M.
Giri, A. - Carlsen, M.
Hou, Y. - Eljanov, P.
So, W. - Tomashevsky, E.
Ding, L. - Van Wely, L.
Navara, D. - Mamedyarov, S.
Caruana, F. - Wei, Y.

Giri has a good record against Carlsen, so maybe the last chance to stop Magnus winning the event?

[Mick Norris]

Challengers Round 10 - Wednesday the 27th with a meeting between the 2 leaders

van Foreest, J. - Bok, B.
Ju, W. - Admiraal, M.
Haast, A. - Abasov, N.
Antipov, M. - Sevian, S.
Dreev, A. (6) - Batsiashvili, N.
l'Ami, E. - Nisipeanu, L.
Baskaran, A. (6.5) - Safarli, E. (6.5)