R5: Radjabov back in the lead

After the rest day the players are sitting nice and freshly behind their boards, for the fifth round. Interesting games: Ivanchuk-Carlsen and Aronian-Anand (not - drawn already). And Mamedyarov is trying 1.e4 c5 2.b3 against Van Wely.


Aronian-Anand was a very quick draw. This is what Vishy told Macauley afterwards, already wearing his coat:

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"329","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"355","width":"425","style":""}}]]



Ivanchuk-Carlsen was no fun either and already finished too. Chucky invariably refuses to answer questions from non-Russian press, despite his excellent English. Instead, he prefers to spend his days in this pose for hours and hours.

And so we have to conclude, again, that most of the fun is actually happening in the B and C groups. An interesting Marshall in Smeets-Bacrot, Spoelman who seems to do quite well against Hou Yifan, L'Ami-Cheparinov in a sharp Anti-Moscow Slav, Peng-Li in an important line of the Bayonet King's Indian... and much more.

Update 18:40h

All A group games have finished fairly quickly today, and we've even had the press conference already (Teimour Radjabov). We'll put it up as soon as possible. So what happened? Mamedyarov's 2.b3 proved less innocent than it appeared, since Van Wely needed quite some time on the clock during the middlegame. An improvement was probably 26...Rd8 because after 26...Bb6 things went downhill for Black. Adams-Kramnik was what everyone expected: a Petroff, and subsequently a not too interesting draw. Another full point was scored by Topalov, but he was still not satisfied with his play. "You don't need to be a genius to find some good moves," he said. And indeed, it was more Gelfand having a bad day. Polgar didn't achieve much against Leko's Marshall, and in the ending Leko could even give away his isolated queen's pawn to easily hold the draw.

In B, Spoelman scored his first half point against Hou Yifan, but let's move on to Smeets-Bacrot. Smeets has been working with Stellwagen on this specific Marshall line and most probably had seen Bacrot's novelty 19...Bh3 before. Actually, both players had probably analysed Black's rook exchange sacrifice already. The best way to play for a win with White might be 27.Qc6!? but in the game it went wrong for White surprisingly quickly. Another notable game was top seed Cheparinov getting crushed by l'Ami. These guys had a training session together in September and it's now clear who profited most! In C Braun appears to be cruising to a smooth 5 out of 5.

Grandmastergroup A S. Mamedyarov - L. van Wely 1-0 P. Eljanov - T. Radjabov 0-1 M. Adams - V. Kramnik ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? L. Aronian - V. Anand ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? V. Ivanchuk - M. Carlsen ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? J. Polgar - P. Leko ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? V. Topalov - B. Gelfand 1-0

Grandmastergroup B D. Stellwagen - N. Short ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? W. Spoelman - Y. Hou ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? S. Movsesian - P. Harikrishna ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? J. Smeets - E. Bacrot 0-1 I. Nepomniachtchi - M. Krasenkow E. L'Ami - I. Cheparinov 1-0 H. Koneru - G. Sargissian ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ?

Grandmastergroup C F. Nijboer - I. Krush 1-0 P. Negi - A. Ushenina 1-0 Z. Peng - S. Li ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? Van der Werf - Van der Wiel ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? D. Ruijgrok - A. Braun ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ? D. Reinderman - P. Carlsson 1-0 E. Grivas - F. Caruana ?Ǭ?-?Ǭ?

New photos by forest:


Complete schedule + results »

External links:

• Tournament website
• Macauley's videos
• Live web commentary (Chessdom)
• Web commentary Chesspro (Russian)