Tata Steel 2016 - Video Recap - Round 7

Opening: E10: Queen's pawn game

Player(s): Carlsen, Eljanov

GM Lars Bo Hansen recaps Round 7. In Italian there is a saying, similar to the English "Troubles always come in three's", but with a slightly different meaning. It can be used to say that good things, once they happen twice, they will then always happen thrice. And this is what Magnus Carlsen did today: he won his third game in a row. Eljanov confessed on Twitter and Facebook that he overestimated his position, and analysis of the game shows he was quite right. Carlsen doesn't allow anyone the slightest mistake, and he ran over the strong Pavel to climb at +3. Caruana played a very good game against Ding, and he's the only one who - at least for now - keeps the World Champion's pace. They share the lead now, a full point ahead of the chasing pack, with So, Giri and Ding. Hou Yifan - for whom we are shamelessly rooting - today lost her first game, to get back in the group of players at 50%. Mamedyarov played well, and Hou wasn't able to contrast the super Azeri, who with this win joins the 50% group as well. The young Chinese star Wei Yi drew his seventh game; there are two school of thoughts here: some say he's not ready to win at this level, others say his opponents play extremely solid to avoid his tactical skills. As usual, probably the truth lies somewhere in between. In any case, 50% for the 16-year-old genius with this field is not to be frowned upon. Giri, the third "candidate" playing in the Netherlands, won against Van Wely. Four decisive games have made this round one of the most exciting so far. Now it looks like a two-horse race, but this is a long event, and there are 6 rounds to go. Tomorrow it'll be very interesting: both Caruana and Carlsen play black, respectively against Navara and Karjakin. Play starts at 7:30AM EST - 13:30 CET.