Theoretically Speaking in Bilbao

Aggressive players and sharp lines. That's what we have plenty of at the Bilbao Grand Slam Final. And deep lines, plenty of those, too. Today we had two bishop sacrifices. One a startling novelty on move nine from Aronian in his win over co-leader Grischuk. The other was a bail-out by Karjakin in a position that looked good for him against Shirov. It was Aronian's third win in a row after starting out with a loss to Grischuk. It was Grischuk's second loss in a row after his impressive start. He's still in clear second place thanks to the 3-1-0 scoring system in use in Bilbao. On points he's tied with Karjakin on an even score. Shirov is still bringing up the rear without a win. If you're trying to keep score at home, that's 9, 6, 5, 2.

Grischuk played an awkward variation of the Slav that really doesn't look like it suits his dynamic style. But he's played it before, and so have Movsesian and... Aronian. 7.a3 is Aronian's compatriot Lputian's patent. I wonder if they'd looked at these positions together at some point, and how long Aronian's been waiting to play 10.Bxb5. It really doesn't look that shattering, easy for me to say. But both Larry Christiansen on Chess.FM and Garry Kasparov, who was spectating at the start of the round, thought Black was doing okay after 11..Ra6 12.h3 Nh6 13.c6 Nc5. Grischuk sank nearly 40 minutes of the first control's 90 to play a different, and soon clearly inferior, plan with 11..Rb8. The game turned into a mirror of their first round encounter, when Grischuk's novelty put Aronian into the tank for a long time.

Similarly, Grischuk battled well here against Aronian's imprecise play only to have his early clock usage catch up with him. Grischuk was well under ten minutes when he had a chance at a miracle save. 23..Rc8!? is a computer clockwork device: 24.Bxb4 Bxe3! 25.Kxe3 Rxc2 26.Rxc2 Rxe5+ 27.Kd4 Bxb3 with a miracle draw. Down to minutes even the Moscow blitz champion couldn't work that out and his 23..Rbd8 put him back into a lost endgame. Aronian, with 30 minutes, decided to blitz as well and that gave the Russian another lease on life. Down to seconds, Grischuk couldn't find the right moves and was soon lost yet again and for the final time. Surprisingly unsteady technique from Aronian, but in the long view his opening surprise and his quickplay strategy paid off.

Shirov spent a long time trying to envision a new shape against Karjakin, who surprised with the Zaitsev. He came back to the wheel after all, arriving at the well-trodden path of Kasparov-Karpov, 1986. 22.Re3 is the standard move, not the K-K 22.Bb2. Shirov took a long think, trying by sheer force of will to come up with something new. His 24.Nxb5 is technically new, though of course the obvious capture was analyzed in 1986. Karjakin responded aggressively and seemed to be getting the better of things. 27..g6 28.Ne3 Ba6 puts a lot of pressure on the white position. After the game, in comments to Macauley in Bilbao for Chess.FM, Karjakin said he couldn't see anything better than the bailout bishop sacrifice 27..Bxb5 that led to a quick repetition. Shirov might have played on with 30.Nxh6+!? but the black d-pawn is scary and there are many repetitions.

This was only the second draw of the tournament and it was between the same players who drew the first, and in similar fashion. Tomorrow it's Grischuk-Karjakin and Aronian-Shirov. It's double-barreled GM time on Chess.FM tomorrow, with Benjamin and Har-Zvi tag-teaming the mic. FYI, Macauley should be putting up my 10 minute train interview with Kasparov on the Carlsen coaching thing tomorrow at the Chess.FM blog.