The winner of the 3rd Grand Slam Chess Masters Final will be decided on the last day. The draw between Kramnik and Anand today, Thursday, leaves for tomorrow the decision of who will be 2009 Champion Levon Aronian’s successor. Anand, playing today as black, was able to keep his options open by drawing, while Kramnik could not guarantee himself the final triumph, which he would have achieved had he won today. For his part, Carlsen walked away with victory against Shirov, making it three days he has gone without losing, after drawing Monday and Wednesday’s marathon matches.

Today the Masters Final was attended by FIDE President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who met with tournament organizers and officially opened the day’s play, along with Spanish Chess Federation President, Javier Ochoa.

In the first match the tournament’s top two players faced off. Vladimir Kramnik played as white, showing enviable form, while playing with black was World Champion Anand who has had hiccups throughout the tournament. A victory today for Kramnik would have practically meant an assurance of victory in this Final. The match began with one of the most critical and complex variations, the Vienna variation of the Queen’s Gambit.

Kramnik, most likely due to his favourable position in the competition, opted for line based on a light spatial advantage in the centre. Kramnik mobilized his central pawns to gain space in the centre and on the king’s side, regrouping his pieces accordingly, while Anand played his own game on the queen’s side. In the most tense move, Kramnik chose to exchange two pawns which lead almost inevitably to a dead draw endgame, with bishops of opposite colours.





In the second match, current world number one, Magnus Carlsen, went up with white against the ever-creative Alexei Shirov. In the match Alexei played one of his specialties, the Moller variation of the Spanish opening. Carlsen tried an unconventianal play, based on placing a knight in the heart of the enemy in the rook’s file, which was effective in distracting all of the enemy pieces in the centre, where he was able to dominate.

Shirov tried to take advantage of white’s coordination problems and animate the "a7" knight. However, Magnus easily counterplayed and used his superiority in the centre to launch a devastating attack against the black king, from which Alexei was only able to emerge with great loss of material. The endgame came down to a situation of a queen against a rook and a knight, with Shirov unsuccessfully trying to create a fortress. Magnus won his first victoy in the Grand Slam Final, virtually recovering 2800 ELO points and moving into third place.





The Final Chess Masters 2010, organized by the Grand Slam Chess Association, consists of two parts. The first one was a qualification tournament in Shanghai, on 3-8th September, with the participation of Hao Wang, Alexey Shirov, Levon Aronian, and Vladimir Kramnik.

Two players from Shanghai, Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik, advanced to the second stage in Bilbao, where they meet the world's top rated player Magnus Carlsen and the World Champion Viswanathan Anand.
The Bilbao stage is taking place on 9-15th October.

The 2010 Final Masters will be played according to the Sofia rules (draws can be offered only through arbiters) and the Bilbao system (3 points for a win, 1 for draw, and 0 for loss).


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