Morozevich Strikes Again At The Tal Memorial

Alexander Morozevich is showing his best form at the 2012 Tal Memorial, and he won his third game in the fifth round to claim the sole lead by beating Lev Aronian.

It was a thrilling game, with Aronian preempting Morozevich's threatened kingside attack with a piece sacrifice which eventually netted four pawns and an impressive centre.  However, Aronian's position fell apart in time pressure and the tide turned in his opponent's favour leaving Morozevich as the sole leader.

In the only other decisive game of the round, Magnus Carlsen pressurised Teimour Radjabov into time-trouble errors in an unpleasant endgame to record his first win of the tournament.

Fabiano Caruana missed a good opportunity to win with black against Alexander Grischuk, while Nakamura and Kramnik amusingly both forgot their opening theory before reaching a draw.

The battle between Evgeny Tomashevsky and Luke McShane was predictably sharp, and followed the familiar pattern established by the English player: spend lots of the time on the clock to obtain a good/possibly winning position, then blow any advantage away in time trouble.

To be fair to McShane, it seems that many of the players are having trouble managing their time in the tournament, although the complexity of some of the games is a possible mitigating factor.

The results in round five:

.

The tournament leader, Alexander Morozevich has 4/5

.

A bad day for the world's #2 ranked player Lev Aronian

.

.

.

Fabiano Caruana sacrificed the exchange but could only draw

.

.
Hikaru Nakamura is still searching for his first win

.

.

Time waits for no man...Luke McShane's biggest enemy is the clock

.

The standings after five rounds:

.

The pairings for round six are:

Photos by Eteri Kublashvili (except the screenshot of Radjabov).  Games via TWIC.

.

.

The 2012 Tal Memorial super-tournament takes place in Moscow, Russia from 7-19 June.

The format is a 10-player single round robin, with rounds starting at 15:00 local time (11:00 UTC), except for the last round which starts two hours earlier.

The total prize fund is €100,000 with €30,000 going to the winner.  The time control in operation is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves, and finally 15 minutes to a finish with an increment of 30 seconds from the start. No draw offers will be allowed before move 40.

The tournament schedule:

.

There will be live video coverage on chess.com/tv (scroll down for the schedule) as well as at the official website.  The video coverage at the official website is available for replay here (Russian commentary) and also here (English commentary).

Last year Magnus Carlsen won the tournament, narrowly beating Lev Aronian on superior tie-breaks after both finished with a score of 5½/9. 

In case of a tie in this year's event, the tie-breaks are:

1. Number of games played with black
2. Number of wins
3. Result of direct encounter
4. Koya system
5. Sonneborn-Berger