All games drawn in 5th round Linares

Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk are still sharing the lead in Linares after all round 5 games ended in a draw. Aronian accepted a quick peace offer by Wang Yue while Grischuk's White repertoire had no answer to Carlsen's Sveshnikov. Anand miraculously saved a rook ending against Ivanchuk and Dominguez had a narrow escape against Radjabov.

From February 18 till March 8 the 26th Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez Ciudad de Linares takes place. There is no starting fee for the players this time; the prize fund is € 314,000. The winner takes € 100,000, the second place is € 75,000 and the third player earns € 50,000.

Round 5 Ivanchuk has made a close study of the Anand-Kramnik world championship match. In the third round in Linares he followed the 10th matchgame from Bonn for a long time and in round five he copied the seventh match game for 23 moves, in the footsteps of Anand, but this time his opponent was... Anand! The world champion didn't follow Kramnik's plan of 23...g5 and Kg8-f7, but instead tried 23...a5. He quickly had to give up a pawn, but then defended very well and used a stalemate trick to draw the rook ending.

Wang Yue "improved" upon one of his own games with 12.c5 but it wasn't very dangerous and already at move 26 he agreed to a draw against one of the tournament leaders, Aronian. The other leader, Grischuk, threw 23 known moves on the board against Carlsen's Sveshnikov, and the Russian then didn't have a real improvent either. Ten moves later the scoresheets were signed. Such games are being played more and more at top level, and even the greatest theory junks can't be too exciting about it anymore.

But there was enough to enjoy at the last board, since Dominguez rarely avoids a sharp battle and so he happily accepted Radjabov's invitation to fight it all out in a Sicilian Dragon. The Cuban had peeked at a recent Macieja game but Radjabov too, and he improved with 17...gxf5! after which it was very unclear. In the ending, Black was the only one who could try for a win and he came close - 55...Rg3+! would have been very strong.



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Links:

• Round 1 report
• Round 2 report
• Round 3 report
• Round 4 report
• Official website
• Games in PGN