The Cuban Grand Master Leinier Dominguez won with the white pieces against his Philippine counterpart Wesley So , in the eighth round of the 76th Tata Steel Masters tournament , underway in the Dutch city of Wijk aan Zee. This success allowed him to settle for the first time in his career among the top ten players in the world , as reflected in the live update of the ranking, with an ELO of 2760.9 .
The favorable outcome occurred in 21 moves of a Petroff Defense. It was Dominguez’s third victory in the tourney and now escorts with five points, tied with Dutch Anish Giri, the leaders of the standings : the Armenian Levon Aronian (6 points ) and Russian Sergey Karjakin ( 5).
This Wednesday will be the day off and tomorrow Leinier will play with black pieces Israeli Boris Gelfand. In the closing two rounds he will hold two complicated matches, precisely against the two leaders. For Dominguez this ELO of 2760.9 was a new personal record, over his previous 2757 he reached with his spectacular victory in the Grand Prix of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2013.
Top-ten in the live world ranking (January 21, 2014)
Magnus Carlsen (Norway) 2872.0
Levon Aronian (Armenia) 2824.1
Fabiano Caruana (Italy) 2787.2
Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) 2787.0
Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) 2785.0
Alexander Grischuk (Russia) 2777.0
Hikaru Nakamura (USA) 2773.5
Viswanatand Anand (India) 2773.0
Sergey Karjakin (Russia) 2771.0
Leinier Domínguez (Cuba) 2760.9
Author
Daniel A. Fernández
