Sergey Karjakin defeated tournament leader Alexander Grischuk in the third round of the Grand Slam Final in Bilbao. Levon Aronian beat Alexei Shirov to catch Grischuk in the lead. Full report.

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 3

Bilbao hasn't disappointed us thus far, with five decisive games out of six in total! The only player who hasn't won a game yet is Alexei Shirov, and in the third round he was the victim of a small, personal drama. It's not clear to us what exactly went wrong in his mind, but the facts are that only eight new moves were played in a Marshall, and then he already resigned!

Yesterday's issue (#36) of ChessVibes Openings already included this game, and the authors, IMs Merijn van Delft and Robert Ris, wrote:

It may be interesting to check the White moves between move 21 and 29 and you will see that White had no clue what he was doing. All his pieces were disfunctioning and disturbing each other and with standard Marshall moves h5-h4 and Rfe8 Black gave a free lesson in optimal efficiency.

That might be a bit too harsh, since until move 24 Rybka agrees on White's moves. Only 25.Re2? is clearly wrong, as Shirov also admitted after the game. By the way, Van Delft & Ris also noted that Aronian is the only player who ever beat Shirov in a Marshall with Black, and even for the second time now! Perhaps even at this level Angstgegners exist...

The other game saw a reborn Karjakin executing a wonderful attack on Grischuk's king, in a Ruy Lopez. We all know how to perform the standard moves like Nb1-d2-f1-g3, and some of us haven even moved that other knight to h2 and g4 many times without giving it much thought, but then comes the hard part. Karjakin even missed one or two stronger options, but he did keep Grischuk under pressure, and the Russian eventually succumbed, both clockwise and over the board.

Round 3 games

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Bilbao Grand Slam Final Masters 2009 | Schedule & results

The Plaza Nueva in Bilbao, Spain

While Sergey Karjakin ponders over his next move inside the cube...

...his wife WIM Kateryana Dolzhikova thinks about hers, in the blitz event alongside the cube

The final position of Shirov-Aronian, with the kings placed in the center to tell the electronical board that the result is 0-1

The press conference with Aronian and Shirov after the game

Karjakin and Grischuk at the press conference

All photos by Manu de Alba courtesy of the official website

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN