Caruana eying the trophy at Tal Memorial

Italian champion Fabiano Caruana defeated Vladimir Kramnik in the penultimate round of the Tal Memorial to move into the sole lead with one game to go.

Kramnik, who was the joint leader after the 6th round, suffered two consecutive losses with black pieces and slipped down in the standings.

The game was fairly balanced, with white having an extra pawn and black compensating with the active pieces. Caruana tactfully probed the opponent’s weak points and achieved some edge before the first time control.

Suddenly, Kramnik leaped ahead with the knight, missing that white can simply take it and emerge with two minor pieces for the rook.

Fabiano Caruana

The advantage was still not decisive, with white likely to face technical difficulties, but Kramnik was probably disgusted with the blunder and promptly resigned.

Mikhail Tal Memorial 2012

The 7th Mikhail Tal Memorial will take place from 7th to 19th June, 2012, in Moscow, Russia.

Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Radjabov Teimour, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana have confirmed the participation. The venue, tournament format and other participants will be announced later.

Update: The field is now complete with Alexander Morozevich, Alexander Grischuk, Evgeny Tomashevsky andwinner of the voting contest Luke McShane. McShane still needs to arrange a leave from his regular job.

The previous edition was held in November 2011, but this time the tournament is moved to June. Last month Ilya Levitov mentioned that RCF is having trouble in planning the calendar as to avoid the clashes with other tournaments and FIDE events.

Mikhail Tal Memorial, winners of the previous editions:2006 – Levon Aronian, Peter Leko, Ruslan Ponomariov – 5½ /92007 – Vladimir Kramnik 6½ /92008 – Vassily Ivanchuk 6 /92009 – Vladimir Kramnik 6½ /92010 – Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov – 5½ /92011 – Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian – 5½ /9

Source:www.chessdom.com