Fabiano Caruana took an early lead at the Grenke Chess Classic in Baden-Baden on Thursday, beating Georg Meier with the white pieces in a French Defence, Rubinstein Variation. Superb opening preparation gave the Italian a slightly better position but a big time advantage, and at some point Meier started to make inevitable mistakes. Both Adams-Anand and  Naiditsch-Fridman ended in draws.

Caruana beats Meier in round 1 | All photos © Georgios Souleidis, more here

February used to be the month of the Linares super tournament, but unfortunately it has disappeared from the calendar. However, we'll have three big events this month: Zurich at the end, Reykjavik in the middle and now the Grenke Chess Classic, which started on Thursday. Two players will play in both Baden-Baden and Zurich: Vishy Anand and Fabiano Caruana.

The Grenke Classic is a double round robin with 10 rounds and one rest day on Tuesday the 12th. The time control is 40 moves for 100 minutes followed by 20 moves in 50 minutes followed by 15 minutes to finish the game, with a 30-second increment from the start. Since draw offers before move 40 are not allowed, we're going to see a lot of long games!

In the first round Fabiano Caruana immediately washed away the bad vibes which might have been left from his previous tournament, Tata Steel in Wijk aan Zee last month. There, the Italian basically had his first bad tournament in a long time, and consequently he dropped big time in the rankings. In Baden-Baden's first round he looked like the good old Caruana again:

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Fabiano Caruana starts with a good win, and leads by half a point

World Champion Vishy Anand, on his turn, played his first good tournament in a long time in Wijk aan Zee, and he'll surely like to continue the same way in both Baden-Baden and Zurich. Against Adams, he seemed to be equalizing comfortably out of the opening, but after a risky rook manoeuvre his position became slightly unpleasant.

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Only a week after finishing shared 5th in Gibraltar, Michael Adams drew with the World Champ

Arkadij Naiditsch and Daniel Fridman, the numbers 1 and 2 on the German Elo list, drew the least entertaining game of the round. Fridman was doing fine against Naiditsch' choice of opening, which is all the rage these days: the Scotch Four Knights. Without the anti-draw rule the game would probably have finished a bit earlier.

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A balanced game between Germany's top players

Grenke Chess Classic 2013 | Pairings

Grenke Classic 2013 | Round 1 standings