Carlsen close to winning the Kings

Three draws today left matters as they were, so Magnus Carlsen is on the verge of yet another tournament success.
He didn't achieve any advantage against Nisipeanu's daring opening, but a draw was sufficient to consolidate his lead.

Liviu-Dieter's choice of the seemingly risky Jänisch (aka the Schliemann) worked wonders. In one of the main lines, where some books give White as being slightly better, Carlsen was unable to find anything better than a queen ending where he had an extra pawn but where his opponent had the most dangerous passed pawn. Perpetual check ended the game.

WhiteRatingCountryResultBlackRatingCountryNo. MovesOpening
Teimour Radjabov2740AZE0.5-0.5Wang Yue2752CHN32Spanish Jänisch
Ruslan Ponomariov2733UKR0.5-0.5Boris Gelfand2752ISR31Caro-Kann
Magnus Carlsen2813NOR0.5-0.5Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu2672ROU32Petroff's defence

Ponomariov against Gelfand (they meet again!) was a slightly unusual Caro-Kann resulting from 1.c4 c6 2.e4 which, after 2...d5, leads to Panov-style positions, except that White's pawn is on d2. Ponomariov didn't in fact delay d2-d4 for very long and a classical IQP middlegame resulted. White obtained the bishop pair, but Black had well-placed pieces and a knight outpost when the draw was (prematurely!?) agreed.

Radjabov obtained a kingside initiative for the cost of a pawn, but Wang Yue found a satisfactory defence. This led to the Azeri Radjabov taking a perpetual as the attack had been nullified and he was still a pawn light.

PositionNameCountryRatingPre-tournament rating changeWorld RankingPoints (from 9)
1stMagnus CarlsenNOR2813-16.5
2ndBoris GelfandISR2741-9115.5
3rdTeimour RadjabovAZE2740-134.5
4thLiviu-Dieter NisipeanuROU2672+11594
5thRuslan PonomariovUKR2733-4183.5
6thWang YueCHN2752+383

The leaderboard remains unchanged.

With only one game remaining there is only a slight chance that Carlsen will be caught.

The final round can be followed live at 11.30 am (London), 12.30 pm (Paris) or 14.30 local time tomorrow.

For this possibility and other information see the Official site

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