By Steve Giddins

Round eight of Wijk aan Zee 2010 looked, on paper, to be the most exciting so far, featuring as it did three clashes among the faourites. However, two of these proved rather disappointing. The World Champion, Vishy Anand, has failed to get going at all in this year's tournament, and he got nowhere against Ivanchuk's Accelerated Dragon.

Shirov-Carlsen was full of fascinating complications, but with the board still full of pieces and the position as unclear as ever, the players repeated moves.

The third big clash lived up to expectations, and saw Kramnik inflict Nakamura's first defeat of the event.

Leko beat Smeets, after the latter suffered a tactical accident in the middlegame.

Kariakin opened his winning account at the expense of Nigel Short, who once again had cause to curse the fickle finger of fate. Some creative play saw the Englishman trade his queen for assorted wood, but the position was far too tactically difficult for any carbon-based organism to handle accurately, and he went fatally astray.

The day's longest game was Caruana-Tiviakov. When the latter gave up the bishop pair in the opening, he doubtless anticipated the possibility of a certain amount of subsequent torture, but, like Monty Python before him, I am sure he didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition. However, Caruana turned the screws with an efficiency that would have done credit to Torquemada himself, and was eventually rewarded with his first victory of the tournament.

B Group leader Anish Giri won his fifth game, crushing rival David Howell with a powerful opening novelty.

From Chessbase.com