Sunday 18 June 2017

Aronian wins in Norway, while Giri blows a sandshoe

Lev Aronian has won the very tough 2017 Altibox tournament in Norway, with 6/9. 3 wins and 6 draws was enough to leave him a full point ahead of Hikaru Nakamura and Vladimir Kramnik. Nakamura did have a chance to catch Aronian, but got caught by some Caruana preparation in the Poisoned Pawn and lost his first game of the tournament. Kramnik was then able to grab a share of second place after Giri completely miss played his opening an lost on 20 moves.
The other big news was Carlsen's less than stellar performance, finishing on 4/9. To be fair, Carlsen has performed poorly in Norwegian events (at least in recent years), and never seemed to get into gear. This result, combined with Kramnik's strong performance has closed the gap at the top of the rating list to just under 11 points.
It looks as though most of the players in this event are taking a break from 'classical' chess, although there is a couple of GCT rapids coming up. All eyes may be on the Dortmund event in July, as Kramnik is taking part in that event, and usually he does well there.

Kramnik,Vladimir (2808) - Giri,Anish (2771) [D05]
5th Norway Chess 2017 Stavanger NOR (9.4), 16.06.2017


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