Tata Steel 2016 - Video Recap - Round 5

Opening: D83: Grunfeld: Capablanca variation

Player(s): Van Wely, Carlsen

Gm Jon Speelman recaps Round 5. Magnus broke the "you'll always draw" spell, and he did so in a spectacular way. Today we have seen fireworks on the board during his game vs. Van Wely. These days "romantic" chess has been replaced by computer-like precision, and we see games played by the top guys with many moves that an engine would play. Well, today Carlsen went to the opposite direction, creating a psychological masterpiece. At move 23, with 17 moves to go for the time control, Magnus saw that Loek's clock was down to 13 minutes, and decided to sac a knight. The sac was not sound, but one can be reasonably sure that Magnus knew it. Van Wely had to take, and from then on Magnus kept playing moves that contributed to increase the pressure upon his opponent. Magnus did not play the best moves - 27... Rx2 is a blunder, and white wins - but Loek wasn't able to see it, cracked down blundering away his winning advantage and after a few more moves, with his red-hot clock down to the increment, collapsed under Magnus' intimidating attack. A very inspiring game by the World Champion, that helps us think it's not only about computers nowadays. Hou Yifan continued with her great performance in Wjik, playing a good game against the leader Fabiano Caruana, and holding him to a draw, with some brilliant play in the rook endgame. After 5 rounds Yifan is at +1, sharing second place with So, Carlsen and Eljanov. The other Chines super-GM today beat Karjakin - showing an excellent endgame technique - putting an end to the good streak the Russian had against Chinese players. With today's win, Liren joins Caruana in the lead. Mamedyarov won with Adams, who seems to be in bad form, despite his good performance in London only a month ago. His endgame play was catastrophic, allowing Mame to win his first game in the tournament and join the group at 50%, with Karjakin and Wei. Tomorrow round 6 starts at 7:30AM EST - 13:30 CET.

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