Sinquefield Cup, Round 3: Five Draws and Some Missed Opportunities

There were no winners in today's round, but in several games one player got close.

Starting from the top, in the battle of world champions, Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen seemed on their way to a routine draw when Anand blundered a pawn with 39.Rac2?! Ra4 40.Nb3?, missing the simple 40...Rxb3 41.Rxb3 Nd4. Unfortunately for Carlsen, Anand had studied his Dvoretsky* and knew very well how to defend the rook + three kingside pawns + a-pawn vs. rook + three kingside pawn ending, and the game inevitably finished peacefully. 60.g4! was an especially nice touch that made it easy, a trick worth remembering.

That was the last game to finish, and it kept Carlsen tied for first with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Fabiano Caruana. MVL could very well have finished the day in clear first, as he obtained a huge advantage against Peter Svidler. But somewhere around move 30 he started letting the advantage drip away, and the critical moment came when he played 32.Kh2?, walking into the nice tactic 32...d5!, intending 33...Rb4. After that it was Svidler's turn to look for an advantage, but not seeing anything concrete (e.g. with 40...Rd8) he forced perpetual.

Caruana also had good winning chances, in his game with Ian Nepomniachtchi. The game was very sharp, a kind of Closed Sicilian that followed the traditional pattern: White throwing everything at Black's king while Black hurries to break through on the queenside. Caruana, with White, never had anything that was completely clear, but there were some promising options - Qe3 on moves 29 and, to a lesser extent, move 30 - would have given Nepo more to worry about. Instead he won the exchange, but Black's compensation was evident and enough to induce Caruana to repeat moves - especially as the American player was very short of time.

Wesley So's game with Hikaru Nakamura was more like Carlsen's game than MVL's or Caruana's. The game appeared to be headed for a draw until Nakamura lost/unnecessarily sacrificed a pawn, but with good defensive technique Nakamura kept things under control and held the half-point.

That leaves Levon Aronian vs. Sergey Karjakin. In this game, and this game only, no one had even a whiff of a winning chance. The game finished quickly by repetition in only 23 moves.

Here are tomorrow's pairings:

Carlsen (2) - Vachier-Lagrave (2)
Caruana (2) - Karjakin (1.5)
Aronian (1.5) - Anand (1.5)
Svidler (1) - So (1.5)
Nepomniachtchi (.5) - Nakamura (1.5)

* Yes, I mean this seriously, referring to the great Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. Many GMs have lauded the book; not as something they studied when they were little kids, but as a book they worked through as strong GMs. The particular endgame in question is one that has been deeply worked out over the past 15-20 years, and Dvoretsky was one of the analysts who helped make that happen.