Round 4 live from Wijk aan Zee

Last update 23.39 CET
Preview pressconference Topalov

The fourth round just started and so far it looks promising. Tiviakov refused to play his Scandinavian pet line with 3…Qd6 and chose the accelerated Dragon against the leader of the field, Radjabov. Shirov is creating again fire on the board against Topalov, who always is in for such a fight. This can be a very interesting game. So far the main game of this variation between Van Wely and Sutovsky, Dortmund 2005 is followed.
Carlsen looking very tired today, seems to go for a draw against Anand. Most probably Anand will not give him this additional rest day.

update 14.57 CET Live blogging is more up to date than writing something after the game, but it’s never fully up to date, as the draw between Carlsen and Anand shows. When we saw that a drawn position had resulted after the opening, we had two options: leave it at our original prediction (it won’t be easy for Carlsen), or change it to the latest position. We chose the former, and were thus proven wrong. Mrs. Anand, who has been reading a book in the press room every day, has left already. But let’s not mourn: Topalov-Shirov is still very exciting. Shirov’s ..Rd8 was the first new move. The position with Kramnik-Navara (who by the way is the newest hero of the editors of Chessvibes) is also interesting, that is, if you like technical positions. We’re looking forward to another very interesting day of chess!

update 15.47 uur While Aronian and Motylev are analysing next to me after their draw, it looks like Topalov is going for the kill versus Shirov. Van Wely is also just playing for two results (draw or victory).

While Topalov’s second (Cheparinov) looks quite satisfied in the pressroom, we share a part of the analysis between Aronian and Motylev:
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update 17.45 CET Topalov has won and given a press conference. Black could have defended tougher at some points, but Topalov thinks White always retains good chances in the exchange-sac-variation. Of course we’ve filmed it all and we’ll do our best to put everything online asap. Here we have a preview (in somewhat lesser quality) of Topalov’s explication:

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Kramnik is still milking his plus against Navara. In fact this may turn out to be the most instructive game of the day.

Update 23.39 CET: to finish this article, a last update by Peter. Navara is still one of our favourites after he held the draw against the world champion, who besides his 1.d4 sometimes returns to his old repertoire from the Khalifman books (1.Nf3 followed by main lines). Kramnik had a tiny plus throughout the game, and it’s awsome how the young Czech doesn’t let Kramnik increase that plus for 62 moves.

The real crack of this early phase is of course Teimour Radjabov. After his small surprise on the first move he played a very strong game, in which he never lost his desire to win. He constantly kept Tivi under pressure, with small means. A nice example of exchanging different types of advantages. It’s interesting to compare Svidler-Ponomariov with Topalov’s press conference after the second round. Here too, the English Attack is played ‘modernly’ with the move f4 by White. This time Black didn’t have much trouble. Van Wely was going strong again with White, but again had to settle for the draw after his passed a-pawn wasn’t in time to stop Karjakin’s attack that led to a perpetual.