Gashimov Memorial 2016 - GOTD Round 3

Opening: C80: Ruy Lopez: open

Player(s): Caruana, Hou Yifan

Another exciting round in Shamkir today! Three decisive games out of five, for a great round. Hou Yifan went for a an Open Ruy Lopez against Caruana. An odd choice in a way, though Hou has used this opening (as white) in the recent Women World Championship. It Is not a common opening at this level. Caruana went out of theory at move 18 with h4. Hou didn't seem to handle the novelty too well, and 27 … h5 was a huge mistake, that allowed Fabiano to overcome the Women World champion and win the game rather easily. Caruana now leads solo, with a fantastic +2 after 3 rounds. Harikrishna today played Karjakin, and chose the Petroff, which everyone knows be Sergey's home ground. At move 12 Pentala played the incredible h6, allowing Karjakin to unleash a vicious attack, sacrificing the dark square bishop on the pawn. Harikrishna understood immediately that taking the bishop would have led to immediate disaster; so he tried c4, but it was already too late to recover the blunder. Karjakin forced the Indian into a lost endgame, after Harikrishna had to dodge a number of mortal threats.  Mamedyarov beat Eljanov, who is now the tail end of the standings, with -2. 11. bxc3 was the key move of the game. Mamedyarov played this strange-looking move perhaps to avoid a super-boring line - had he taken the pawn with the Queen - that would have most probably led to a draw. From there on, a bold Mamedyarov payed a modern classic, inspired and precise, to win his first game in the third Gashimov Memorial. tomorrow round 4, starting at 7AM EDT - -13:00 CEST.