The Week in Chess

The third round rapid and blitz playoffs of the FIDE World Cup in Tromso saw only saw a couple of surprises out of the 10 matches. In general the favourite progressed to round 4.

Julio Granda Zuniga defeated Anish Giri with an impressive squeeze in the first rapid game and a comfortable hold with black. The naturally talented Granda has been in superb form in this tournament.

Alexander Grischuk got in a real mess against Le Quang Liem's Gruenfeld and was ground down in the first rapid game and although he had rook and knight vs rook he couldn't convert this drawn ending.

Favourites Vladimir Kramnik and Vassily Ivanchuk advanced smoothly after two rapid games. Fabiano Caruana was dead lost in the first rapid game against Malakhov when he lost a pawn race but still won, not surprisingly there was nothing left from his opponent after that. World Rapid Champion Shakhriyar Mamedyarov finally saw off 14 year old Chinese player Yi Wei, he just had too much for him at rapid chess even when under pressure in the second game. Russian Junior Daniil Dubov said he was beaten by the better man as Anton Korobov progressed.

Next to be eliminated was Alexey Dreev who wasted a whole tournament's worth of chances against Dmitry Andreikin capped with 40.Qd3?? when a rook up which lost him his Queen in the fourth and final rapid game.

Both blitz games saw the first game drawn and the second decisive as Alexander Morozevich beat Nikita Vitiugov and Sergey Karjakin beat Pavel Eljanov.

The fourth round with still a huge amount of quality is on Tuesday and sees these pairings: Tomashevsky vs Morozevich, Kamsky vs Mamedyarov, Le Quang Liem vs Svidler, Karjakin vs Andreikin, Caruana vs Granda Zuniga, Gelfand vs Vachier-Lagrave, Kramnik vs Ivanchuk and Nakamura vs Korobov.