Carlsen and Karjakin win in fifth round Kings' Tournament

Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin won their games in the fifth round of the Kings' Tournament in Medias, Romania. Carlsen outplayed Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu in a Queen's Gambit Accepted while Karjakin profited from one big mistake by Vassily Ivanchuk on move 16, which allowed a crushing kingside attack. Teimour Radjabov and Hikaru Nakamura drew quickly in a sharp Najdorf.

General info

The Kings Tournament takes place June 11-21 at the Natural Gas Documentation and Information Centre in Medias, Romania. Magnus Carlsen, Vassily Ivanchuk, Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, Teimour Radjabov and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu play a double round-robin with one rest day after five rounds. Games start 15.30 local time (14.30 CET).

Report round 5 by GM Dorian Rogozenco

The last round of the first half of Kings’ Tournament turned out to be very exciting with two decisive games and one interesting draw. The curious thing is that both decisive games started with quiet openings, while Radjabov-Nakamura displayed a very sharp line in Sicilian Najdorf, which looked like anything but a draw.

Nakamura’s opening preparation was impressive once again and Radjabov had a difficult task to find many precise moves over the board in a wild position. The Azerbaijani grandmaster managed it very well, but obviously was consuming more time than his opponent. The players entered an endgame with slightly better chances for Black, which Radjabov succeeded to hold rather confidently.

Carlsen-Nisipeanu was a Queen’s Gambit Accepted, the variation 7.dxc5, where White exchanges queens right in the opening. Then Nisipeanu mixed something up and produced a novelty that quickly led to an unpleasant position for Black, where White’s bishops’ pair dominated. Carlsen converted his advantage into a full point with an amazing ease.



In Ivanchuk-Karjakin the Ukrainian chose a quiet line in Italian Game and it seems that there will be long manoeuvring before (and if!) anything captivating could happen. Then suddenly Ivanchuk overlooked a well hidden tactical resource, which immediately secured Black a large advantage. Karjakin was precise until the end and won his first game in the Kings’ Tournament.



Thus after the first half of the tournament Carlsen is leading with 3.5 point out of 5 games, Karjakin is in the sole second place with 3 points, Nakamura is alone third with 2.5 points and three players are sharing places 4-6 with 2 points each: Nisipeanu, Ivanchuk and Radjabov. Wednesday is a rest day, and like last years there will be an indoor football match.

Games round 5 - notes by GM Dorian Rogozenco

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Videos

 

Kings Tournament 2011 | Schedule & results Kings Tournament 2011 | Round 5 standings

Link

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC