R5: Aronian leads by a point
What a tournament so far, this Amber 2008, wow. Round 5 saw Morozevich crushing Anand, Carlsen doing the same to Gelfand (both blindfold!), Kramnik defeating Topalov with a queen sacrifice (1?Ǭ?-?Ǭ?)... Another great round.Morozevich-Anand was theory for at least 16 moves and according to Moro, the decisive mistake was 24...Rb8. It allowed a typical sacrifice that "must be winning", according to Ljubojevic. "Wasn't it Speelman who said that five pieces in the attack always win?" The clash between the rivals Topalov and Kramnik was another handshake-less, drawn Petroff. Mamedyarov made kind of a mouse-slip with 16...Bg7 and was punished severely by Leko while Van Wely-Karjakin and Ivanchuk-Aronian were two draws. Carlsen scored a fine win after Gelfand made an early mistake with 9...h6?!, underestimating the simple move 10.Re1, when things like 11.e5 Bxg2 12.exf6 Bb7 13.fxg7 Bxg7 14.Nf5 are threatened. 25.g5 was a nice shot by Magnus of course.In the rapids, Morozevich wasn't a shadow of his White game and simply blundered a piece. Kramnik scored a nice victory against Topalov, where especially 32.Be7, paralyzing Black completely, made him happy. In Mamedyarov-Leko something funny happened: Shakh played 48.Ne4?? and almost let go (almost did "a Magnus"), until he saw that his king had no squares after 48...Rb5+. It meant that any advantage was gone, and so the players immediately shook hands. Just like Carlsen did against Gelfand, Karjakin opted for 6.h3 against Van Wely's Najdorf he had planned it before he saw Magnus' game!) and had no mercy after Black's 9...b4. Well, both players actually thought it wasn't so clear after 14...Ng8. Aronian won a nice White game against Ivanchuk and the last game of the day was a reasonably interesting draw in Gelfand-Carlsen.And so Levon Aronian is suddenly a point clear in the combined standings, with 6.5 out of 10, followed by the big three Kramnik, Anand and Topalov but also Ivanchuk, Leko and Carlsen, who are all on 5.5. Aronian's first spot is mainly the result of his excellent 4 out of 5 rapid score; in the blindfold, yes, it is Carlsen who tops with 3.5 out of 5.
| Blindfold games: | Rapid games: | |
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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