Candidates R5 – all four games drawn

From March 14 to April 1, 2013, FIDE and AGON – the World Chess Federation’s commercial partner – are staging the 2013 Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship 2013. It will be the strongest tournament of its kind in history. The venue is The IET, 2 Savoy Place, London. The Prize Fund to be shared by the players totals €510,000. The winner of the Candidates will become the Challenger to Viswanathan Anand who has reigned as World Champion since 2007. The main sponsor for the Candidates is State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic SOCAR, which has sponsored elite events chess in the past.

Round five report

By GM Alejandro Ramirez

Svidler-Gelfand

Peter Svidler (above, with Chief Arbiter Werner Stubenvoll behind him) played yet another Gruenfeld… but this time with white! The system he employed is unusual but has a dangerous bite to it, as in many cases White is simply able to control the center without any typical Gruenfeld counterplay.

This is exactly what happened in this game and after the original and strong f4!? and h4-h5 ideas White had a powerful and unopposed center and prospects on the kingside. On move 23, however, Svidler played the very mysterious move e6?!, giving away all of his advantage. After some more strange moves the game reached a position in which both players had enough of the melee that this game was and agreed to a draw.

Grischuk-Radjabov

This idea in the Queen’s Gambit Declined of playing Bf4 and an early c5 is well known, but it seems that there is no advantage to White. Black was able to powerfully control the open a-file, which fully compensated for his lack of space. Radjabov at some point decided to give his dead bishop for two pawns, which might have been unnecessary, but it was still good enough to hold a draw.

Kramnik-Aronian

A somewhat bland opening gave Kramnik the opportunity to slowly but surely outplay Aronian in a symmetrical pawn structure position. And endgame was reached in which only White had chances, but a win was nowhere in sight. White’s passed d-pawn and pair of bishops were very menacing, but they had to deal with that annoying black passed pawn on b2. In the end, after finding some very resourceful moves, Aronian successfully simplified into an opposite colored bishop endgame that was drawn despite White’s two extra pawns.

Ivanchuk-Carlsen

Another Gruenfeld. This time it put Magnus Carlsen (above) against the ropes relatively quickly as he was after all a pawn down. However his activity and White’s poor pawn structure did not allow Vassily Ivanchuk to easily capitalize on his gain. White went into the knight endgame up a pawn, but it offered no chances to win. It is hard to say if Ivanchuk (below) really missed any better winning opportunities.

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Pictures by Ray Morris-Hill

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The games start at 14:00h = 2 p.m. London time = 15:00h European time, 17:00h Moscow, 8 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here. Note that Britain and Europe switch to Summer time on March 31, so that the last two rounds will start an hour earlier for places that do not swich or have already done so (e.g. USA). The commentary on Playchess begins one hour after the start of the games and is free for premium members.

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