Aronian, Bu and Topalov lead at half-time
Sacrificing an exchange for beautiful compensation, Topalov defeated Svidler in typical style in round 5 of the Nanjing Super Tournament. The Bulgarian joined leaders Aronian and Bu who drew against each other, just like Ivanchuk and Movsesian did.The 1st Pearl Spring Super GM Tournament takes place December 11- 21 in Nanjing, China. It's a six-player double round robin event with Veselin Topalov ( 2791), Vassily Ivanchuk (2786), Levon Aronian (2757), Sergei Movsesian (2732) Peter Svidler (2727) and Bu Xiangzhi (2714). Live games start daily at 15:00 local time which is early morning for Western countries (08:00 CET, 02:00 EST). We get the impresson that Veselin Topalov really likes playing against the Gruenfeld-Indian. A smashing victory against Alexei Shirov in Wijk aan Zee is still fresh in our memory and in the 5th round in Nanjing the world's number one scored his first win against Svidler, and a fine one. After a positional rook sacrifice the top seed was in full control and just a few moves later Black's position was hopeless. Movsesian drew quite easily again, this time with Black against Vassily Ivanchuk who tried an interesting pawn sacrifice. He did get some initiative but thanks to an excellent counter with a rook switch to the queenside, Movsesian forced a perpetual. In any case the Nanjing organisers must have been extremely satisfied with the tournament until now, simply because local hero Bu Xiangzhi grabbed the lead in the first round and is still topping the list at half time! However it looks like he escaped today after Aronian didn't took advantage of a serious inaccuracy. Tomorrow is a rest day in Nanjing.
Games of the 5th round:
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