With a quick draw against Wang Hao on Friday Magnus Carlsen got a bit closer to tournament victory in Wijk aan Zee. The Norwegian's lead in Tata Steel's A group decreased to a point as Levon Aronian won his game against Hikaru Nakamura. Fabiano Caruana is not having a great tournament and in this round the Italian got crushed by Anish Giri. Peter Leko defeated Loek van Wely in a rook ending and Ivan Sokolov got his queen trapped against Sergey Karjakin.

After his draw against Wang Hao, Magnus Carlsen still leads by a point | Photo © Tata Steel

In the B group Arkadij Naiditsch took over the lead from Richard Rapport by beating the Hungarian in a direct confrontation. The German grandmaster is on 7.5/11 just like Sergey Movsesian, who drew quickly with Jan Smeets. In C the fight for victory was and is still going between two players: Fernando Peralta and Sabino Brunello. Both are on 9/11 and two points ahead of the rest.

After the third and last rest day play resumed on Friday in Wijk aan Zee, where only three rounds are left, time flies! In order to have a really exciting weekend Carlsen basically had to lose, and at least one of his closest rivals, Anand, Aronian or Nakamura, had to win.

The second part of this scenario did occur: Levon Aronian won his game and so he got half a point closer to Carlsen in the standings. For a brief moment the first part seemed realistic as well, since Wang Hao got a clear advantage out of the opening against the tournament leader. However, actually winning the ending was not easy and as soon as he got the chance, Carlsen equalize immediately.

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After winning last year's event, Levon Aronian is not doing badly either this year. In this 11th round he beat Hikaru Nakamura with the black pieces from a Chebanenko Slav. Afterwards the Armenian said that the start of the ending was already unpleasant for White, and that his preparation had paid off.

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Levon Aronian still has some chances to catch up with Magnus Carlsen

Vishy Anand seemed to be following suit; the World Champion won a pawn in the opening and eventually reached a knight ending that should have been winning. However, the World Champion messed up somewhere.

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Vishy Anand must have miscalculated in the knight ending

Sergey Karjakin had an easy day at the office. As he said himself, Ivan Sokolov isn't having a great tournament, and he played this game below his usual standard. Karjakin didn't have to do anything special to win. Still, the win came a bit sudden when the black queen got trapped.

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An easy win for Sergey Karjakin

Fabiano Caruana is another player who isn't having his tournament. The world's number 5 in fact dropped out of the live top 10 today after getting crushed by a player from his generation: Anish Giri.

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Peter Leko moved to "plus two" by beating Loek van Wely, who went for the Sicilian Dragon. Not expecting this opening, the Hungarian didn't go for the sharp 9.Bc4 but for 9.0-0-0 instead. His endgame advantage wasn't much, and the game should have ended in a draw, but after a tiny inaccuracy by Van Wely, Leko did get a slight advantage and after that the technique he showed was just splendid.

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The game l'Ami vs Harikrishna followed an old line in the Queen's Indian which in fact leads to a kind of Grünfeld structure. The players reached an ending with BB vs BB and a passed a-pawn for Black against an extra pawn in the centre for White. Not much really happened until the players shook hands at move 54.

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B group

The big game in the B group was of course Arkadij Naiditsch, the highest rated player there, against Hungarian talent and co-leader Richard Rapport. The German grandmaster played a quiet game but a great one, in the style of Capablanca – the computers only understand that Black is lost a few moves before the end!

Naiditsch vs Rapport, an instructive endgame

After two losses Jan Timman returned to his good form with an excellent win over Predrag Nikolic. Daniil Dubov crushed Sergey Tiviakov and both Romain Edouard and Sipke Ernst won their games with Black.

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C group

In a so far disappointing tournament, Lisa Schut won her second game; the 18-year-old WIM managed beat IM Mark van der Werf who is now in last place instead of her. Fernando Peralta could have gotten into trouble if Miguoel Admiraal had found the zwischenzug 36.b5 but instead the Dutch FM lost himself in the complications. Sabino Brunello was held to a draw by Twan Burg in a Caro-Kann with Fischer's 5.Nc5!?.

Lisa Schut beat Mark van der Werf

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Tata Steel 2013 | Grandmaster Group A | Round 11 standings

Tata Steel 2013 | Grandmaster Group A | Pairings

Tata Steel 2013 | Grandmaster Group B | Round 11 standings

Tata Steel 2013 | Grandmaster Group B | Pairings

Tata Steel 2013 | Grandmaster Group C | Round 11 standings

Tata Steel 2013 | Grandmaster Group C | Pairings