Tata Steel Masters

Nils Grandelius is the only player on a perfect 2/2 in the Tata Steel Masters after he scored an effortless win with the black pieces over Jan-Krzysztof Duda in Round 2. The only other player to win was Fabiano Caruana, who found some brilliant moves to put late replacement Alexander Donchenko to the sword in a game analysed by Jan Gustafsson. Magnus Carlsen headed the list of players frustrated by draws as he couldn’t quite squeeze out a win in a 6-hour marathon against David Anton.

World no. 2 Fabiano Caruana on Sunday showed the kind of play that saw him destroy the field in the 2020 Tata Steel Masters as he picked up his first win of 2021. His German opponent Alexander Donchenko repeated a line in which Fabi had got into difficulty in the Yekaterinburg Candidates Tournament against Anish Giri, but the US star came prepared with the novelty 11…a6. Alexander spent 10 minutes before going for an aggressive pawn push, but his continued ambition would eventually backfire as Caruana smoothly refuted those aggressive intentions.