Aronian & Carlsen maintain half point lead in Wijk aan Zee

In round 5 of the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen maintained their half-point lead over the rest of the field. Hikaru Nakamura scored a quick win against David Navara while Boris Gelfand won with Black against Sergey Karjakin. The third winner in the A group was Vassily Ivanchuk, who won against Vugar Gshimov.

The first Thursday is traditionally the only day when no amateur event takes place in the playing hall

After the first rest day, when indeed some players played football, the tournament resumed with an exciting 5th round.

ECU President Silvio Danailov visited the tournament on Thursday - here he's standing next to one of the organizers, Dolf Vos

Hikaru Nakamura was the first to score a full point, which was in fact the first win for the American. Not for the first time in this tournament David Navara at some point completely collapsed.

[Event "74th Tata Steel GMA"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2012.01.19"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Nakamura, Hi"]
[Black "Navara, D."]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "A22"]
[WhiteElo "2759"]
[BlackElo "2712"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "3r1rk1/pp1qbppp/1n6/2p5/1n2BN2/1P2P1P1/PB1P1R1P/R4QK1 w - - 0 16"]
[PlyCount "36"]
[EventDate "2012.01.14"]

16... N6d5 $2 (16... f5 17. Bg2 Bf6 {
was the best way to defend against White's pressure.}) 17. Nh5 $1 {
With so many pieces pointed towards his king, Black can hardly defend himself.}
g6 18. a3 Na6 $6 (18... f5 $5 {might have been Black's last chance.}) 19. Bxd5
$1 Qxd5 20. Bf6 $1 {A nice tactic that's more or less decisive.} Qd6 21. Bxe7
Qxe7 22. Nf6+ Kg7 23. Qc4 $1 {With his knight on the rim Black is helpless.}
Qe5 24. Raf1 h5 25. Nxh5+ $1 Qxh5 26. Rxf7+ Rxf7 27. Rxf7+ Kh6 28. Qf4+ g5 29.
Qf6+ Qg6 30. Qf1 Qh5 31. Rxb7 c4 32. Qf6+ Qg6 33. Qxd8 Qb1+ 34. Kf2 1-0

After the game we had a brief chat with Nakamura. First, we asked him whether this was indeed an easy win.

I wouldn't call it easy. David couldn't come up with the right setup for his pieces and pretty much from the early middlegame on I was just a little bit better and then he made a couple of serious mistakes. It was a relatively smooth win and certainly after the poor start I'm quite happy to win a game. For whatever reason up until my game against Anish I felt like I was playing badly and once I was able to draw that game very quickly I... I don't know how to explain it, I just had this very good feeling that I was just going to win my next game. Because of that I was very positive going into the game today, it felt very natural... I'm very happy with my game today overall.

We asked Hikaru to what extent he's thinking about last year's success, and whether it influences his play.

One big difference with last year is that this time I'm coming off with playing three very strong tournaments in a row and it's something I've never done before. I feel like overall, I've been swinging a little bit. In Moscow I played horribly, one of the worst tournaments I've ever played, then I played very well in London, Reggio I was playing well but then I just lost my head at the end...

What exactly happened?

I made two very big mistakes. The first one was that after my win against Vitiugov in the 6th game I started looking ahead instead of focusing on the tournament. My goal at that point was, I wanted to become Anand, I wanted to just draw all games very simply, get out of the tournament and get on to Wijk. That's a sensible plan to have but for whatever reason I made some poor opening choices where there was a lot of play and it was just very difficult. When you sort of switch your mindset from one tournament to another, it's very difficult. I sort of felt like the tournament was over. Instead of staying focused and trying to finish the tournament well I just completely shut down and I think that carried over here.

Until today.

Yes. One big advantage to winning last year, to even playing here several times now is that, one of the main things to remember is that it's a very long tournament and even if you get off to a bad start, if you sort of minimize the damage and you don't lose too many games at the start, you can always return to form before it's too late!

Boris Gelfand also won his first game, and it was a fine victory in a Najdorf with Black against Sergey Karjakin. It got him the 500 euro daily prize.

[Event "74th Tata Steel GMA"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2012.01.19"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Karjakin, Sergey"]
[Black "Gelfand, B."]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B90"]
[WhiteElo "2769"]
[BlackElo "2739"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "5rk1/1p1nppb1/p1rpb2p/q5p1/3BPP2/2N3PP/PPP2Q2/2KR1B1R w - - 0 19"]
[PlyCount "52"]
[EventDate "2012.01.14"]

{Gelfand didn't like White's next two moves.} 19. h4 g4 20. Nd5 Bxd5 21. exd5
Rc5 $1 22. Bxg7 (22. Bxc5 Nxc5 {followed by 23...Na4 is even worse for White.})
22... Kxg7 23. Kb1 Rxd5 24. Rxd5 Qxd5 25. Bg2 Qc5 {
White doesn't have enough compensation.} 26. Qe2 Nf6 $1 27. Qxe7 (27. Bxb7 Rb8
28. Bxa6 Qc3 29. Bb5 Qxg3) 27... b5 28. Qb7 Re8 29. Rc1 Qf2 30. Bd5 Nxd5 31.
Qxd5 Re1 32. Qxd6 Qxg3 33. Qd4+ Kg8 34. b3 Rxc1+ 35. Kxc1 Qxh4 36. Kd2 g3 37.
Ke3 Qg4 38. Qd8+ Kg7 39. Qd4+ Kg8 40. Qd8+ Kh7 41. Qd3+ Qg6 42. Kf3 g2 43.
Qxg6+ Kxg6 44. Kxg2 b4 0-1

Boris Gelfand, and other participants, arriving in the playing hall

We know where the Israeli grandmaster got his inspiration from, because afterwards he told us he had been watching Real Madrid-Barcelona on Wednesday night.

"Did you see it? It wasn't really a fight this time. Magnus [Carlsen, known to support Real - CV] agreed, Real wasn't putting up much resistance."

Fan of Barcelona Boris Gelfand

The third winner in the A group was Vassily Ivanchuk, who thus "recovered" from what was apparently a disappointing draw against Loek van Wely on Tuesday. Basically Vugar Gashimov was playing too optimistically, as he admitted himself after the game.

I played badly so I deserved to lose! Ne1 and g4 didn't work. I tried to play for a win but it was not a good idea.

[Event "74th Tata Steel GMA"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2012.01.19"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Gashimov, V."]
[Black "Ivanchuk, V."]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B07"]
[WhiteElo "2761"]
[BlackElo "2766"]
[PlyCount "40"]
[EventDate "2012.01.14"]

1. e4 g6 2. d4 d6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Bg7 5. e5 Nfd7 6. f4 O-O 7. Nf3 Nb6 8. Be2
Nc6 9. O-O f6 10. exf6 exf6 11. Bh4 d5 {
Here it's more or less OK for White, but he choses the wrong plan.} 12. Ne1 $6
Ne7 13. g4 $6 Nc4 $1 14. Bxc4 dxc4 15. Ng2 b5 $1 16. Nxb5 Rb8 17. Nc3 Rxb2 18.
Na4 Rb4 19. Nc5 c3 20. Qe2 Nc6 {Black was already winning here.}

At the start of the round, most attention went to Carlsen-Giri. The reason, of course, was Giri's quick win exactly one year ago, which made the headlines and resulted in an appearance in a very popular talkshow on national television. This time the two young stars drew, after lots of complications.

The same result was seen in the other games and the quickest of those was Van Wely versus Aronian. It was clear from the start that they were both happy with this result. Van Wely:

Of course I was kind of hoping the guy would try some fancy business and then I could profit from his risky strategy but it seemed that he also was kind of content with a draw I think.

Aronian:

Giving yourself an extra rest day is never a mistake I think. I didn't feel like risking today.

For all groups Ivan Sokolov is awarding the daily prizes, but even if it hadn't been his good friend Jan Timman playing the game, Sokolov would surely have awarded the B group's 250 euro envelope to the white player for his fine victory over Sipke Ernst.

It was a strategical fight where White's Réti bishop got very strong from the start. Some nice, tactical nuances based on positional factors made it a very nice game.

The players analyzing afterwards

Timman showed this game with the famous demo board in the press room and yes, we filmed it! When he was ready, he said to his old friends Hans Ree and Hans Böhm: "Now I hope Ivan likes it too!"

Pentala Harikrishna is half a point ahead of Alexander Motylev, who beat Kateryna Lahno with Black in a Scandinavian with 3...Qd6. The Russian grandmaster, who is also helping Sergey Karjakin, had met the same variation earlier in the tournament with White against Sergey Tiviakov!

Maxim Turov also won his 5th game and so maintained his full point lead - Hans Tikkanen is the only player with 4/5. Pre-tournament favorite Matthew Sadler needs to hurry a bit if he still wants to fight for first place... 

Daily video by the organizers

Games group A, round 5

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Round 5 standings

Games group B, round 5

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Round 5 standings

Games group C, round 5

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Round 5 standings

The B group at the start of the round

Vladimir Potkin and Sergey Tiviakov chatting before the game

The post-mortem between Teimour Radjabov and Veselin Topalov