2016 Candidates Moscow 10-29 March

[Jonathan Rogers]

Once again I say:

For a game that's supposed to be about deep opening preparation, it isn't half looking like it's all about taking your chances.

Absolutely. Anand is tied for first because he has taken practically every chance. Caruana is "only" tied for first because he has only converted two out of about five opportunities (though the save against Giri was a half point extra the other way).

As it now stands, Caruana has the advantage that he is tied with Anand and has beaten him in their head to head encounters. Even if a third party joins them on +2, Caruana might still win on the first tiebreak, so Anand under more pressure to go +3, but he only has one White left, and that is against Giri of all people.

[John McKenna]

Caruana the only undefeated player...

I guess it's almost time to write off Giri - he's drawn himself, undefeated, to the point of defeat as far as winning the Candidates goes.

Still, what passed between him and a truthful commentator could spur him on to win his remaining three games!
Or could it?

Did anyone catch the beginning of the Giri-Nakamura press conference ?

Evgenij Miroshnichenko: So, we are back with another press conference. Err, Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura finished their game in a draw. 3 second pause Quite a usual result for Anish it seems (said whilst smiling), so, got something to say? Well today it looked very close right?

Anish Giri: I’m going to restrain myself because err… It’s going to be saved forever on the internet, so I’m not going to say anything bad to you right now, but erm… yeah… I’ve err… I think I played a good game.
Evgenij Miroshnichenko no longer smiling.

[Tim Harding]

...Caruana the only undefeated player.

Correction: Giri is also undefeated.

The only players who have not won any game are Giri and Topalov.

[MartinCarpenter]

I've got a lot of sympathy for Giri. He's played quite a few really quite good interesting/games this tournament.

I've had spells a bit like it. You're playing interesting chess/positions but no matter what you do, good or bad!, the games just seem to end up drawn.

[Mick Norris]

Giri is black against Svidler, a must win game for both if they are to have any chance surely, then Anand, who will presumably need to push to beat him, before a white game v Topalov - he might be playing well enough to win all 3, big ask though, but he should certainly win 1

Topalov's remaining white v J'adoubeamura must be his best chance of a win

[Mick Norris]

TWIC report

Anand has seen these tense final round situations many times, perhaps he is the best equipped to deal with it

[JustinHorton]

I've got a lot of sympathy for Giri. He's played quite a few really quite good interesting/games this tournament
.

Has he ever really been in trouble?

[JustinHorton]

I notice that Svidler is now at 25/1 - still a long shot, but amyone tempted at those odds might think it's a shame they didn't back him yesterday at 100.

[JustinHorton]

Talking of long shots, I think it is still possible for all eight players to win, though I wouldn't swear to it: Topalov can still get to 7 and I can't yet see that the pairings make it inevitable that somebody must get to 7.5, or that a tie-break would inevitably work against Topalov. (Come to that though I've not yet come up with a sequence whereby Topalov wins. Anybody else fancy a go?)

EDIT: I can't find any sequence of results that both gets Topalov to 7 and prevents at least one other player reaching 7.5. I should have something better to do.

[Mick Norris]

I've got a lot of sympathy for Giri. He's played quite a few really quite good interesting/games this tournament
.

Has he ever really been in trouble?

He was under pressure in round 2 as black against Caruana, not sure if you would describe it as trouble

[Jonathan Bryant]

Top plays the first Sicilian of the event. On other boards, has my screen frozen or has Aronian really been pondering pondering his reply to Caruana’s Spanish for 8 minutes?

[JustinHorton]

Chess24 has them on move 14.

Whoever would have expected an English Opening theme tournament?

[LawrenceCooper]

Anand bravely walking into Naka's prep.........

[Jonathan Bryant]

Chess24 has them on move 14.

Whoever would have expected an English Opening theme tournament?

c24 had bounced forward as soon as I got back there from posting here. I was thinking about the high 1 c4 rate too. What other elite level events have been dominated by the English? Or at least had a highly significant number of them. Kasparov - Karpov IV in Seville. Any others?

[JustinHorton]

Korchnoi favoured 1. c4 quite a lot but looking up his matches, I see a lot of transposition into 1. d4 openings. There's a couple of pure Englishes in both his 1971 and 1977 matches with Petrosian.