Fabiano Caruana has caught Vishy Anand out in some lethal home preparation to join Sergey Karjakin in the Candidates Tournament lead with only four games now remaining. The other games were drawn, though Levon Aronian missed a great chance to make it a leading trio when he let a winning position slip against Veselin Topalov. The race to play Magnus Carlsen is still much too close to call!
Fabiano Caruana may not have made a great case for being the clear world no. 2 since his 2014 Sinquefield Cup heroics, but he's hit form just when it matters | photo: World Chess
Moscow Candidates Round 10 results
There was absolutely no mistaking the Game of the Day in Moscow. Anand had just won a great game against Aronian to join Karjakin in the lead, but he was immediately knocked back down again by a resurgent Caruana. Fabiano revealed he’d been given a boost by some fortune cookie wisdom the day before, but in Round 10 it was all about some home cooking in the laboratory run by Anand’s old second Rustam Kasimdzhanov.
Some of Fabiano's super-sharp opening preparation has backfired, but it worked perfectly in Round 10 against one of the hardest players to surprise at the chessboard | photo: World Chess
On move 12, Fabiano unleashed a novelty in a line of the English Opening played by both Vishy and his second Grzegorz Gajewski, and soon Black ended up in treacherous waters where every move liked by the computer concealed hidden rocks.
Jan Gustafsson takes us through an encounter that’s both important for chess theory and could prove crucial in determining who plays a match against Magnus Carlsen this November:
As in most of Vishy’s losses in the last couple of years, he didn’t stick around at the board when the tide had turned against him. Resistance would almost certainly have been futile, but it wasn't just chess amateurs who were taken by surprise at the quick resignation:
The Indian genius also wasn’t in the mood to prolong the post-game press conference with any discussion of where it had all gone wrong – Caruana did the job, leaving Vishy to utter the single word “thanks” at the end:
The pressure is building on Anish Giri, with ten draws in a row meaning he can’t help but be considered the author of any draw that appears on the board.
Karjakin last won a game in Round 4, but if he can draw or get another win in his last four games he'll have a great chance of playing a match against Carlsen | photo: World Chess
His opponents have been trying to soften the blow in the post-game press conferences, though, with Anand telling Giri not to be so hard on himself, and Karjakin now starting today’s press conference by explaining that he was playing White (i.e. to blame), and then going on:
It’s always hard to prepare a line against Anish because he knows everything. Today, as usual, he knew everything, but maybe he didn’t remember. That’s why he was thinking for so long.
You could sum up Giri’s remarks thus: he knew there was a forced draw, couldn't remember it, but managed to find it at the board anyway! Of course there was much more to it than that, with the players showing plenty of interesting lines in the post-game press conference:
There was perhaps another inspiration for the direction the game took. While not exactly following her recommendations, Giri did put his pawns in the Triangle formation (c6, d5, e6) recommended by his wife Sopiko Guramishvili in her new chess24 video series.
That was picked up by the watching audience, with Magnus Carlsen's second Jon Ludvig Hammer joining in the fun ("WAG" = wives and girlfriend), provoking a reaction:
With his Nepalese roots Giri perhaps knows something about karma, and may not have shed a tear when Hammer went on to lose to Nils Grandelius in the first game of the qualifying tournament to decide the last player in next month's Altibox Norway Chess tournament (featuring the likes of Carlsen, Kramnik… and Giri!).
Hikaru Nakamura didn’t have his chess-playing fiancée on hand to offer any opening advice, commenting afterwards:
For a tournament as important as this one I think it’s important to eliminate all distractions, so I think it’s always better to be here with a second instead of a girlfriend or a wife.
So far, though, little is going right for the US star, who is understandably already writing the tournament off as a learning experience. In Round 10 he gained a draw with Black against Peter Svidler, which while eminently respectable did nothing to help either player’s chances of a late dash to the finish line.
Peter Svidler has come very close to a great performance in Moscow, but he'd take Giri's 10 draws rather than the 9 draws and a loss he currently has on the scoreboard | photo: World Chess
The curiosity was that until 9.b3 the players were following exactly what took place in Aronian-Topalov:
Peter felt he had some explaining to do, since he’d spent over eight minutes on his 2nd and 3rd moves, despite 1.c4 e5 perhaps not being something that would normally knock a top grandmaster out of their home preparation! That meant Svidler could, if he wanted, follow Aronian’s play, though he was adamant he’d got there on his own:
Our plan was always to play 8.Na4 – I can email the files to people the moment I get to the room if they want to check!
Not since Svidler’s
Grunfeld series on chess24 has a top player’s opening analysis been so
accessible! 
The dance ended on move 9, though, with Nakamura choosing what both players felt (or knew) was the correct move, 9…Re8, when after 10.Bb2 Bf5 Svidler made the familiar lament of every modern-day grandmaster: “I’m sure my file says something, but I don’t remember what!” He explained that on move 17 he got a position he wanted only to realise his planned move had a flaw, while what he did play led only to a quick draw by perpetual check.
Watch the post-game press conference:
Things were much more entertaining in the other encounter to go down the same line. Svidler was amused that Topalov had sunk into deep thought on move 9, played the questionable 9…Qe7 and only then wandered up to their board to be surprised to find that Nakamura had already blitzed out another move at that point – i.e. one that clearly featured in his heavily-checked home preparation. As Peter explained, Veselin only needed to look up at the screen!
For once his habit of staying rooted to his seat during a game worked against Veselin | photo: World Chess
On move 20 Topalov went for simplifications, underestimating how dangerous the near symmetrical position would become. At that point, though, it seems the pressure began to tell – not of the game, but the situation as a whole:
Are we witnessing another Levon Aronian Candidates Tournament
collapse? Although it wasn’t yet the objective moment at which he let a win
slip, the Armenian star was scathing about his play on move 28:
28.c5 was a very bad move, of course. Just 25.Qf3 and it’s technically lost.
The same queen exchange was possible after 28.c5 Bd8 29.Re8+ Kh7, but instead Levon went for 30.Bc3?! admitting to having overlooked 30…Rc8! completely:
i.e. he thought he could win the a5-pawn since the bishop was pinned to the rook, but of course the queen now defends the rook on c8. It never rains but it pours, and here 31.Rf8? finally gave away any vestiges of a white advantage, since 31…Bc7! forced more simplifications.
The Levon horror show went on, with Topalov commenting, “I think you even tried to lose,” which Aronian wasn't denying: “I was just going berserk!” Luckily, though, the position was simple enough that although his suffering extended to move 58 he failed to lose it. Watch the press conference below:
So it’s once again musical chairs at the top, but there’s something faintly ominous about Fabiano Caruana hitting the front, since he also climbed above 2800 and above Vladimir Kramnik:
In the crosstable below you can click on any game to replay it:
As you can see, though, with four rounds to go you can’t discount any of the top five – no, not even Anish Giri! Perhaps the key game of Round 11 will be Anand-Karjakin. It's not just that Vishy needs a win to overtake Sergey, he also knows that at the moment he would lose out on the first tiebreak of "direct encounter" (Sergey won their game in Round 4) if they tied for first. The other games are Aronian-Svidler, Topalov-Caruana and Giri-Nakamura.
You really think I'm gonna give you that 11th draw? | photo: World Chess
Watch Round 11 with live commentary by Jan Gustafsson on Thursday. In case you missed the Round 10 show - featuring such gems as Loek van Wely choosing which Candidate he would want to be stranded with on a desert island - you can watch it in full below:
You can also watch the games in our free mobile apps:
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