Fabiano Caruana played one of the best tournaments of his outstanding career and by beating Jan-Krzystof Duda in Round 12 he secured first place and is 1.5 (!) ahead of Magnus Carlsen going into the last round.

Duda had some opening problems at the beginning of the event, but since that he has been quite comfortable in most of his games and actually was one of the 4 players (together with Caruana, Carlsen and So) without a single loss. It all changed after Round 12. Once again, he got into big trouble right after the opening, and Caruana actually considered his position winning until Duda came up with 18...Rb8 idea. After that Fabiano didn't see a forced win (engines suggest 20.Bd2! and it's interesting why Caruana thought it was not enough) and accepted just a better position. He didn't know if his advantage was enough for a win until Duda moved his knight to f8 on move 29. It was an easy sail for the tournament winner after that as he quickly got an extra pawn and completely dominating position.

With this win, Caruana secured a clear tournament victory, as his only real competitor Magnus Carlsen couldn't break Vladislav Artemiev's defense. World Champion decided against testing Artemiev's Caro-Cann and chose a calmer line against Gruenfeld (11.d5 instead of 11.Be2 is the most principled continuation). The 21-year-old Russian chose a way to defense introduced by his elder compatriot Peter Svidler which is always a good path in Gruenfeld and held his own in the endgame. Carlsen won a pawn, but the rook ending was completely drawn.

Daniil Dubov somewhat easily crushed Yu Yangiy and moved into the top 5. The Chinese GM has a disastrous tournament and seems completely out of his game. He went for a very passive set-up only playing for a draw and then blundered with 16...Ra7 as according to Dubov he missed 18.Qb4 completely. White penetrated into Black's camp immediately and it looks like 21.Qb8! was winning on the spot. Dubov missed it and went for a more positional approach, but Black's position was so ugly that it collapsed soon anyway. The young Russian was happy to have this win as historically he has had very poor results against players from China.

Jorden van Foreest had his fair share of crazy games in this event and is probably very happy his position in the tournament standings. That must be the reason why he went for a classical line in the Scotch against Weslley So - White was not taking any risks, but to win against super-solid So playing this way is just impossible. Kovalev surprised Anand with a very rare 3...Nd4 in Ruy Lopez and Anand refused a big battle - a draw was agreed on move 20. Nikita Vitiugov was clearly better against Alireza Firouzja after the opening, but he is probably just waiting for this tournament to be over as on several occasions he chose to simplify the position instead of playing for a full point.

Anish Giri and Jeffery Xiong played an exciting match in the third round of the World Cup 2019 that finally went Xiong's way and today Giri was looking for revenge. He was playing Black but soon got a slightly better position. He probably missed a small chance to get a real edge around move 23, and when he won a pawn after the first time control the queen endgame was very drawish as White was checking black king non-stop. Nevertheless, Giri tortured his opponent for quite a while trying everything but with no real progress. Finally, he settled for a draw on move 107 but definitely with a heavy heart.

In the last round, Caruana will play a "no-pressure" game versus Artemiev, and Carlsen has Black against So, and it is hard to expect a big fight in those games.

While Masters' winner is already known, there was a sudden twist in the Challengers event. David Anton who was crushing the field played a very weird game against the tournament outsider Max Warmerdam and lost with White after making several terrible mistakes. Now he is only half a point ahead of the group of his chasers that includes 15-year-old Nodirbek Abdusattorov. The winner of the Challengers event will play Masters next year.

Official site: https://www.tatasteelchess.com/
Photo: Alina l’Ami

Tata Steel Masters 2020 Standings after Round 12:

1. Caruana - 9;
2. Carlsen - 7½;
3. So - 7;
4-5. Van Foreest, Dubov - 6½;
6-10. Firouzja, Duda, Giri, Artemiev, Anand - 6;
11. Xiong - 5½;
12. Vitiugov - 4½;
13. Yu Yangyi - 4;
14. Kovalev - 3½