The Armenian grandmaster and member of the 2800 club Levon Aronian won the 2012 edition of the Tata Steel Chess tournament. In the last round he made a quick draw with Teimour Radjabov to finish with a total of 9.0 points and at least half a point ahead of the nearest follower.
Aronian started with solid victories against Karjakin and Nakamura in the first two rounds, but a third round battle with Carlsen shed doubts on his form as he lost the 2800s clash with the young Norwegian.
Aronian reacted perfectly to the defeat and recovered scoring a superb 4,5/6 in the next rounds clibing to top position and with a comfortable lead. The intrigue was momentarily back when Aronian lost to David Navara, but the Armenian GM recovered by defeating with black the challenger for the world title Boris Gelfand.
Levon Aronian’s statement and press conference (video)
Levon Aronian
Karjakin – Aronian 0:1 – replay with computer analysis
Aronian – Nakamura 1:0 – annotations by GM Miton
Carlsen – Aronian 1:0 – annotations by GM Miton
Aronian – Kamsky 1:0 – annotations by GM Naiditsch
Van Wely – Aronian 1/2-1/2 – replay with computer analysis
Aronian – Gashimov 1:0 – replay with computer analysis
Ivanchuk – Aronian 1/2-1/2 – replay with computer analysis
Topalov – Aronian 1/2-1/2 – annotations by GM Naiditsch
Aronian – Caruana 1:0 – replay with computer analysis
Giri – Aronian 0:1 – annotations by GM Naiditsch
Aronian – Navara 0:1 – annotations by GM Sedlak
Gelfand – Aronian 0:1 – annotations by GM Sedlak
With this tournament victory Aronian completes yet another career achievement, rising his ELO and is surely already focusing on the Chess Olympiad 2012 where he will lead the team of Armenia.
Final Standings Tata Steel A
| 1 | Aronian, Levon | 2805 | 9 |
| 2 | Carlsen, Magnus | 2835 | 8 |
| 3 | Radjabov, Teimour | 2773 | 8 |
| 4 | Caruana, Fabiano | 2736 | 8 |
| 5 | Ivanchuk, Vassily | 2766 | 7.5 |
| 6 | Nakamura, Hikaru | 2759 | 7.5 |
| 7 | Kamsky, Gata | 2732 | 7 |
| 8 | Karjakin, Sergey | 2769 | 6.5 |
| 9 | Van Wely, Loek | 2692 | 5.5 |
| 10 | Gelfand, Boris | 2739 | 5 |
| 11 | Topalov, Veselin | 2770 | 5 |
| 12 | Gashimov, Vugar | 2761 | 5 |
| 13 | Navara, David | 2712 | 4.5 |
| 14 | Giri, Anish | 2714 | 4.5 |
