Tata Steel 2013 Round 5

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess is taking place from 12-27 January in Wijk Aan Zee in the Netherlands.

This famous annual tournament has three separate single round-robin competitions, the A, B, and C Groups, each featuring 14 players.

The strongest tournament is the A Group and this year features 6 out of the top 10 ranked players; world champion Vishy Anand, world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Lev Aronian, rising star Fabiano Caruana, world #6 Sergey Karjakin, and US champion Hikaru Nakamura.

Chess.com has live coverage and commentary of round 6 with GM Magesh & IM John Bartholomew.  See here for the latest details (scroll down the page).

Chess.com coverage starts at 05:30 Pacific, 08:30 Eastern in the US (13:30 UTC).

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Round 5 - Official website report

Although the eagerly awaited match-up between World Champion Viswanathan Anand and World Number One Magnus Carlsen petered out soon after the opening resulting in a quick draw in round 5 of the 75th Tata Steel Chess Tournament, the audience in Wijk aan Zee was not let down. It was a day full of stunning chess and decisive results: only 4 out of 21 games ended peacefully.

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Coincidentally, Sergey Karjakin was among those drawing his hard-fought game against Anish Giri, and the Russian Grandmaster still shares the lead with Anand and Carlsen.

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Among those catching up with the leaders is Hikaru Nakamura of the USA. Using a tricky mover order in a Sicilian Dragon against Hou Yifan, he obtained a pleasant position and went on to outplay the 18-year-old from China moving quickly and with a steady hand.

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Still, the Chinese fans had some reason to cheer, as Wang Hao soon had the upper hand on the black side of a Bogo Indian against Erwin l'Ami. In the end, two connected passed pawns delivered the final blow.

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Moving to 3 out of 5 points together with Nakamura and Wang Hao is Pentala Harikrishna of India. He faced Holland's Loek van Wely who showed his aggressive intentions by playing his beloved Sicilian Defence. Harikrishna went for it, and soon directed his army towards the black king. In the end, Van Wely was unable to withstand the pressure and was checkmated beautifully: 38.Rf7 Ng7 39.Qxg6! Kxg6 40.Be4#.

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The fourth player to join the runner ups was Peter Leko who beat Fabiano Caruana. After a successful Ruy Lopez, the Hungarian Grandmaster finished off his slow build-up launching an irresistible kingside attack a few moves before the first time control.

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The first to leave the stage was Ivan Sokolov whose side line against Levon Aronian's Grunfeld Indian backfired badly leaving him a piece down in an endgame after a mere twenty moves.

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Group A Standings After 5 Rounds

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In Grandmaster Group B Hungary's Richard Rapport moved into clear first with 4½ out of 5 after beating co-leader Sergey Tiviakov on the black side of a topical French Tarrasch.

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The most spectacular game in group B was Sweden's Nils Grandelius masterpiece against World Junior Champion Alexander Ipatov of Turkey. The young Swede marched his king from b1 to e7 to create mating net around the black king: 34.Qe5 Kg8 35.Kf6! Rc6 36.Qb8 Rc8 37.Re8 Rxe8 38.Qxe8#.

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Group B Round 5 Results

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Group B Standings After Round 5

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In Group C Fernanda Peralta kept the lead by beating Israel's Igor Bitensky, although Sabino Brunello kept pace defeating Alexandra Goryachkina and is half a point behind with 4 out of 5.

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Group C Round 5 Results

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Group C Standings After Round 5

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Photos from the official website. Videos by Freshmen media. Games via TWIC.