Magnus Carlsen remained the sole leader at the Kings' Tournament in Medias, Romania after all games ended in a draw on Sunday. Two more rounds will follow, the last having the encounter between leader Carlsen and runner-up Karjakin.

General info

The Kings Tournament takes place June 11-21 at the Natural Gas Documentation and Information Centre in Medias, Romania. Magnus Carlsen, Vassily Ivanchuk, Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, Teimour Radjabov and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu play a double round-robin with one rest day after five rounds. The rate of play is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to finish the game, with a 30-second increment after move 60. No draws are allowed before move 30. Round 9 starts at 15.30 local time (14.30 CET); round 10 starts at 13.30 (12.30 CET).

Round 8 report by GM Dorian Rogozenco

Although in the 8th round of the Kings‘ Tournament all the games finished in draws, all the games were well-fought. Ivanchuk-Nisipeanu was a fantastic battle of a very high quality. The game started with 1.c4 c5 (the Symmetrical English Opening) and then transferred to a sharp line of Sicilian Kan Variation. Ivanchuk’s 13.Na4 forced Black to go for big complications. Nisipeanu sacrificed a pawn and started to play against the white king stuck in the centre. Both players did their best and after wild complications the game finished in a draw by repetition.

Ivanchuk vs Nisipeanu: a short but excellent game

Radjabov-Carlsen saw another Queen’s Gambit Declined. The game confirmed its reputation of being a rock solid opening. White failed to get any advantage and the game was drawn on move 29 after some short and interesting complications in the end. Don't miss the daily briefing in which Radjabov shows some spectacular lines.

The setup for recording the daily briefings by Dorian Rogozenco - here with Carlsen and Radjabov

Nakamura on the white side against Karjakin seemed to have some opening advantage in the Petrosian Variation of the Queen’s Indian. However, Karjakin’s play was accurate and after Nakamura made a slight inaccuracy on move 24, the Russian succeeded to fully solve all the problems. The draw was agreed on move 47.

Nakamura vs Karjakin

Round 8 games with notes by GM Dorian Rogozenco

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Videos

Kings Tournament 2011 | Schedule & results

Kings Tournament 2011 | Round 8 standings

Magnus Carlsen still in the lead

Link

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC