Aronian beats Nakamura and leads alone after Tata Steel Round 2 (Video).

Levon Aronian defeated Hikaru Nakamura in the second round of the 74th Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee to lead alone on 2/2.

Aronian sacrificed his Queen for Rook, Bishop and Pawn and at first the assessment was unclear but later the position became much easier for him to play and he drove Nakamura back and won further material. Fabiano Caruana was the only other second round winner beating Sergey Karjakin (the only player who remains on 0) after gaining a decisive advantage in only 27 moves although he was slow in finishing the game. Vassily Ivanchuk felt he was clearly better in a technical ending against Magnus Carlsen but didn't really come close to exploiting it against the top seed. Remaining games also drawn.

Round 3 -16th January, 2012, 12:30 GMT: Gelfand-Topalov, Radjabov-Navara, Karjakin-Giri, Nakamura-Caruana, Carlsen-Aronian, Kamsky-Ivanchuk, Van Wely-Gashimov.

Levon Aronian commented afterwards: