Nakamura retains lead, Karpov on 1/7

After seven rounds Hikaru Nakamura still leads the top group of the Donostia Chess Festival in San Sebasti?°n. The American GM is half a point ahead of Ponomariov and a point of Svidler. Anatoly Karpov is having a very tough tournament; the former World Champion is at the bottom of the standings with two draws and five losses.

The Donostia Chess Festival takes place July 6-16 in San Sebasti?°n, Spain. It consists of four different, 10-player round-robins: the "San Sebastian European Cultural City 2016", the "Kutxa Tournament", the "Euskal Xake Eskola Tournament" and the women tournament ‚ÄúDiputaci??n Foral de Gipuzkoa‚Äù. For all details see our first, big pictorial report.

Rounds 5-7

After his excellent start Hikaru Nakamura followed up with another win and two draws to reach 5.5 points and that's half a point more than former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov. On Sunday Nakamura beat San Segundo with the black pieces in another ending and on Monday he took a semi-restday, drawing in 14 moves with Ponomariov - normally something we wouldn't appreciate, but who can blame him in this situation? Yesterday he defended a difficult rook ending against Granda to a draw.

Nakamura is clearly in top form and this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, as he's been playing very well for months already: he won the U.S. Championship with 7/9 and in the French League he scored an amazing 7.5/8! We're not even counting the World Open where he finished shared first, but with five quickplay games.



On the other end of the leaderboard we see a poor Anatoly Karpov getting beaten by almost everyone. After his 1/4 score he went down twice in a kingside attack, against Svidler and Movsesian. Against the latter Karpov blew a probably winning advantage. Yesterday he lost in a queen ending against Vallejo.

It makes you wonder how he will do against Kasparov in September, but such a match is something special of course and Kasparov hasn't played at all except for simuls (and besides, it's rapid and blitz).



In the second group, Van Wely lost his pole position; after his four wins he drew with Ubilava and Bauer and then he lost with the white pieces against Hamdouchi yesterday. The Dutchman was caught by Spanish GM Jordi Magem Badals who is on 5.5/7. Glenn Flear and Eric Prie lead in group 3 and in the women only event Yana Melnikova and Sophie Milliet share first place.







All photos © David Llada published with permission

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All games for replay

• Donostia 1
• Donostia 2
• Donostia 3
• Donostia 4

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN: Group 1, Group 2, Group 3, Group 4