In the 4th round of the Grand Slam Masters Final in Bilbao, Levon Aronian grabbed the lead by beating Alexander Grischuk in a Chebanenko Slav. Alexei Shirov and Sergey Karjakin drew in a Zaitsev that was mostly played before.

The 2nd Grand Slam Masters Final takes place September 6-12 in Bilbao, Spain. It's a 4-player, double round-robin with Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, Sergei Karjakin and Alexei Shirov. The prize fund is € 110,000.

The rate of play is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 60 minutes to finish the game, with 10 extra seconds per move from move number 41. Like last year, the Masters Final will use both the “Sofia Rule” and the “football” scoring system: players will get 3 points for winning a game, 1 point for drawing and 0 points for losing.

Round 4

Although he is the only player who didn't qualify directly for the Grand Slam Final, it is not surprising that Levon Aronian is doing well in Bilbao. Today he defeated co-leader Alexander Grischuk to take sole lead, with two more rounds to go (yes, that's how fast this one goes!). If he manages to maintain that lead, he'll be the winner of both the Grand Prix and the Grand Slam and everyone who still confuses the two cycles will at least know who won.

In the fourth round it was a devastating novelty at move 10 in a Chebanenko Slav that set the tone. Although Grischuk reacted well, and in fact had equalized for about 99% at some point, with little time on the clock he faltered in the ending.

The encounter between Shirov and Karjakin wasn't much of a game when one realizes that the first 23 moves had all been played before. The rest of the moves were very logical and led to a draw more or less by force - it was a matter of two laptops fully agreeing with each other.

For the first time we see a difference between the "football" and the "classical" system in the standings. In the classical system Grischuk and Karjakin would be sharing second place, with a better tiebreak for Grischuk; in the current Bilbao standings Grischuk actually has a full point more.

Round 4 games

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Bilbao Grand Slam Final Masters 2009 | Schedule & results

The photographers can go between the audience and the cube - we recognize New in Chess editor Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, Cathy Rogers (and we know that Macauley Peterson and Fred Lucas have arrived in Bilbao as well)

All photos by Manu de Alba courtesy of the official website

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN