Levon Aronian Well on his Way to Win Tata Steel Chess Tournament

Armenian GM Levon Aronian seemed well on his way to win the 10,000-euro first prize in Grandmaster Group A of the 74th annual Tata Steel Tournament at the Dutch city of Wijk-aan-Zee on Wednesday. With just three more rounds to go in this chess event, he defeated Dutch champion Anish Giri with black to remain on top of the standings, one point ahead of the competition, according to a Round 10 report on the chess tournament’s official website.

“It was a very complicated game,” Aronian said about his victory over Giri, which came after 43 moves from a rare line of the Queen’s Gambit and in which preparation played a crucial part. The Armenian knew the line quite well.

“Actually, I was the first person to try 7.Be2 dxc4 8.0-0 with white myself and, with black, I now played the new 8…Nb6, which may not have been the best move, but white must know how to play. Anish didn’t quite grasp the position. After 13.Bf3 Rxf3, maybe it was unclear but it was easy for black to play. I had a clear plan and, somehow, Anish began to play very badly. Maybe he was upset it wasn’t what he had prepared for. He committed some inaccuracies and after that it was more or less easy for me.”

Asked whether he felt he was going win the tournament, Aronian smiled and said: “We’ll have to wait and see, don’t we? Anyway, I hope I’ll be able to play the next few games as well as I did today.”

With 7.5 points under his belt and currently leading the standings, Aronian is set to play against David Navara (Czech Republic), Boris Gelfand (Israel) and Teymour Radjabov (Azerbaijan) before the tournament wraps up on Sunday, Jan. 29.