Mamedyarov joins Caruana in the lead after beating Kramnik in Candidates Round 6 - Games and Results

Fabiano Caruana played 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nf3 Bg7 4. e3 an idea initially championed by his opponent Alexander Grischuk in 2013. Grischuk said he gave it up because of the setup he tried in the game, a setup Axel Smith called the "Poor Man's Benoni" in his book e3 Poison. Grischuk conceded he was wrong to give the idea up as the position remained very sharp and interesting. Caruana liked his position up to his 27.Bf4 which he described as "really bad" and soon took the opportunity to repeat and draw.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov joined Fabiano Caruana in the lead after defeating Vladimir Kramnik. However Kramnik will probably regard this as a completely self inflicted loss, he totally equalised with black but then thought with 28...h5 he was creating winning chances. Instead a few moves later he blundered horribly with 34...Rdc8 saying that he calculated the resulting position with his rook on c8 instead of c7, but even that seems bad for him. He just seemed to lose all objectivity for a short while. Kramnik dropped his h-pawn for nothing and was completely lost, he resisted for a long time, even finding a mating idea when a rook for queen down but he was never given a saving chance..

This means that Caruana and Mamedyarov share the lead on 4/6 on +2 a point clear of a group on 50% Kramnik, Grishuk and Ding Liren.

Wesley So finally showed what he is capable of against Levon Aronian in a Marshall Ruy Lopez. Aronian was well prepared but was outplayed eventually missing that his 33...Rf8 loses material to 34.Re2! Aronian resisted a long time but the game was gone. Wesley So will be glad to get out of the basement and back into the tournament with this win.

Ding Liren got nothing as white against Sergey Karjakin's Gruenfeld and the game was drawn in 18 moves.

Round 6 standings: 1st Caruana 4pts, 2nd Mamedyarov 4pts, 3rd Kramnik 3pts, 4th Grischuk 3pts, 5th Liren Ding 3pts, 6th Wesley So 2.5pts, 7th Aronian 2.5pts, 8th Karjakin 2pts

Rest day: Saturday 17th March 2018

Round 7 Sunday 18th March 2018 14.00 GMT: Grischuk-Mamedyarov, Kramnik-Ding Liren, Karjakin-Wesley So, Aronian-Caruana