More Near Misses In Tal Memorial Round 5

Round five at the Tal Memorial in Moscow had a similar outcome to round four: lots of fighting chess and interesting games, but no-one managed to deliver a knockout blow.

Hikaru Nakamura had to defend well against Lev Aronian to hold on for a draw in a tricky position, and Vassily Ivanchuk had an even closer escape against Magnus Carlsen.

Sergey Karjakin's game with Peter Svidler was another exciting game, with Karjakin sacrificing material to force Svidler's king to flee up the board all the way to the fourth rank. However, after Svidler found the saving resource 22...Bf3! Karjakin had no better than perpetual check.

Lev Aronian had Hikaru Nakamura on the back foot, but the game was drawn

Magnus Carlsen came even closer to a win against Vassily Ivanchuk

Vladimir Kramnik held world champion Vishy Anand to a draw without too many problems

Sergey Karjakin (right) and Peter Svidler's game was short but eye-catching!

Boris Gelfand (left) is still propping up the field after five rounds

Tomorrow is the only rest day of the tournament, so round six is on Tuesday 22 November.

The standings after five rounds:

The pairings for round six:

Chess.com will have live coverage of rounds 6 and 9 at www.chess.com/tv.

The 2011 Tal Memorial runs from 16-25 November in Moscow, with one rest day on 21 November. Games start at 15:00 local time (11:00 UTC), except the last round which is 2 hours earlier. The time control is 40 moves in 100 minutes, followed by 20 moves in 50 minutes, then 15 minutes to finish, with a 30 second increment from the start of the game. The total prize fund is €100,000 with the winner receiving €30,000.

The official site (in Russian). Pictures from Chess-News.ru.