Carlsen and Kramnik Are Joint Leaders In Corus 2010

At Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands in the Corus Chess 2010, the “Wimbledon of Chess”, Carlsen and Kramnik, the new joint leaders, have 7.5 points each after round 11.

Carlsen also won 500 Euros for the “play of the day” award for his 11th round game against Cuba’s Leinier Dominguez. A game is selected from each round as the best game of the round and awards The Play Of The Day which carries a 500 Euros prize bonus. The game was won in 45 moves with the Grunfeld Defence where Carlsen played white.

Far more interesting was the draw that Kramnik managed in 51 hard-fought moves with black from a Petroff Defence against Spain’s Alexei Shirov. The Spaniard copied part of the game Leko-Anand from the 2005 San Luis World Championships but deviated at the 19th, where Leko had come up with the disastrous 19. Rf1. The improvement, 19. f3, gave him an initiative lasting into an ending where Kramnik said he “had to find a few ‘only moves’” before he could force the draw. “But neither of us made mistakes, I think,” Kramnik said. “I need to run it by the computer but in the post-mortem, at least, we couldn’t find a win.” The former world champion refused to speculate about his chances of winning the tournament. “I’m scheduled to play Anand with black in tomorrow’s round,” he said. “We may discuss my chances afterwards.”

The current standings is as shown below:-

Standings after round 11: grandmaster group A 1. M. Carlsen V. Kramnik 7½ 3. A. Shirov 7 4. S. Karjakin H. Nakamura V. Ivanchuk V. Anand 6 8. L. Dominguez P. Leko 5½ 10. F. Caruana L. van Wely 4½ 12. S. Tiviakov N. Short 4 14. J. Smeets 3