Leinier Dominguez - Fabiano Caruana

At the end of the press conference of the game Bacrot-Grischuk, the Russian showed his surprise that Caruana decided to repeat the moves against Dominguez. In the position where the players decided to take the draw, the opinions differed. Grischuk felt that Black would have had very decent chances after:

15...Qd8 16.Qa7 Bc6 (16...0-0!?)17.Bb6 Bxb5 18.Bxd8 Rxd8 but Caruana felt White is doing very well after for example 19.Qe3 followed by Rhd1, f4-f5 etc.

After the conference, Caruana started following with interest and, possibly, some hope the game:

Boris Gelfand - Ruslan Ponomariov

The latter, who had half-jokingly stated the day before that he would be some sort of arbitre for the qualification, seemed to be rather motivated. He chose the provocative Leningrad Dutch, an opening that had caused Gelfand two painful defeats over the last years, to Kamsky and Nakamura.

    

Being the kind of player who permanently works on his repertoire, Boris controlled the position rather well today. About an hour after Caruana's draw, he, too, offered a move repetition. Ponomariov did not find any positional reasons to continue; his acceptance of a draw sealed Mamedyarov's qualification to the Candidates!...

...and Gelfand's shared win with Caruana!

Throughout the tournament, Tomashevsky had a (surely not intended) shoulder to shoulder race with Ponomariov. They fought hard, tried to play some creative chess, but got only lots of draws and one defeat each. Today, Tomashevsky tried a bit harder to break the spell than his rival (or should we call him rather a colleague of misfortune?!)



Evgeny Tomashesvky - Vassily Ivanchuk

Determined to win a game, Tomashevsky started of agressively against Ivanchuk. A decision he surely would not regret! His treatment of the a6-Slav was very succesfull and brought him an overwhelming advantage:

Spoiled for choice, in the press conference Evgeny said he regretted not having played 17.e6 with the idea 17...Nc5 18.Qd4 g6 19.b4 pinning the knight. Instead, he went for the forced 17.Nxd5!? cxd5 18.Qxd5+ Kh8 19.Bc3 b5 20.Qg2 g6 21.e6+ Bf6 and it's time for another diagram!



Here the game continuation: 22.Bxf6+ looks logical but deprives White of the c6-squares. This becomes especially important after 22.exd7 Bxc3 23.bxc3 Rxd7 24.Qc6! and White consolidates his extra pawn. After 22.Bxf6+ Rxf6 23.exd7 Rxd7 White was still a pawn up, but the technical conversion is much more difficult. Tomashevsky continued to pressure his opponent all the way into a queen endgame. It would be outside the scope of this round report to go into the details of this endgame but the reader is definitely recommended to see the instructive comments by Tomashevsky in the press conference. As so often in queen-endgames, the game ended in perpetual check.

Etienne Bacrot - Alexander Grischuk

Much to the surprise of Grischuk, Etienne Bacrot did not try to win with the White pieces and 'forced' a repetition on his opponent in a 7.Bc4-Grunfeld. Grischuk explained that after:


Wang Hao - Laurent Fressinet

Paradoxicaly, the player who had been constantly complaining about his tiredness was the last one to resign himself to the drawish last round syndrom. In a positional line of the English Opening, Wang Hao obtained long lasting pressure, but could not find a way to cash the point.


The play developed normaly until Fressinet miscalculated, which led to:



26...e4. From this moment on Wang Hao was in the driver's seat - he won that e-pawn, had a strong bishop-pair and seemed to be cruising to a win. But time-trouble changed the course of the game. Instead of:

37.Rd1, Fressinet proposed 37.g5! and this looks very strong indeed. For example: 37...Qe6 38.Be4 Qh3 seems to create counterplay but 39.Rc4! elegantly defends and prepares Bc2, with a large and stable advantage.
In the game 37...Qb4 38.h5?! followed, when 38...Bc5! was a good defensive move. Following 39.Rd7 Bd6 40.Kg2 Kh8 Black was fully back in the game. Twenty more moves were played before the players repeated in a drawn opposite-colour bishops endgame.


That was it all, the 2013 Grand Prix tournament... An outstanding event with 12 top grandmasters and another one in the background: Mamedyarov. We had a high rate of decisive games, continuous suspense until the very end, good and excellent moves but also occasional blunders, deep plans and psychological games... Life is a theater they say, but such a complex and eventful tournament surely is a great episode of life itself!

Men in Black! Short break for Fabiano Caruana and Wang Hao - tomorrow they will be flying to the next chess event:
Kings tournament from Bucharest, Romania!

Au revoir Paris, it was simply magnifique!

Photos of the last round and closing ceremony
Games in pgn
Press conferences