Bazna: Ivanchuk and Gelfand lead at half-time
Vassily Ivanchuk and Boris Gelfand lead at half-time in Bazna after both won their 5th round game, against Kamsky and Shirov respectively, who both blundered. Today is the first rest day.The 3rd Kings Tournament, a six-player round-robin with Radjabov, Ivanchuk, Shirov, Gelfand, Kamsky and Nisipeaniu, takes place June 14-25 in Bazna, Romania. Round 5
Two big blunders marked this round of the Kings Tournament. Kamsky's last move dropped a full rook, although it must be said that his position was already very difficult there. After a mistake on the 15th move, the American stood worse with White, but then fought back very well. Close to the time control Ivanchuk built up the pressure again, and then Kamsky missed a double attack by the black queen.
Shirov, who needed a lot of time in the opening phase against Gelfand, also missed a double attack when he put his rook on b1, where it was unprotected, and so after 18 moves he was already looking at a horrible position. The game shows what happens when you drop not just a pawn, but an important central pawn...
Nisipeanu went for Tiviakov's pet line 3...Qd6 in the Scandinavian and equalized effortlessly against Radjabov, who probably should have put his queen's bishop on f4 as soon as it was possible. In the game White had nothing; perhaps Radjabov had missed or underestimated Black's strong 12th move.
Today is the first rest day. According to the tournament website, (unlike Sofia) there will be one more, between rounds 8 and 9. Gelfand and Ivanchuk lead with 3.5/5 while Radjabov and Shirov are on 50%. The Azerbaijani drew all of his games so far.Games round 5
Click on the pairings at the top of the board to reveal a drop down list of all the games. Click on the arrow under the board just once, then the arrow keys of your keyboard also work. Silverlight works on all browsers and platforms except for Linux, but this should be fixed soon. Contact us for questions, not in the comments section, please.[TABLE=746] [TABLE=750] All photos courtesty of the official website, used with permission
