Baku 05: Peace after the rest day

The first stage of the 2014-2015 FIDE Grand Prix is taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan. The tournament will run from October 1st to October 15, 2014. Some of the strongest players in the world will compete in a Round Robin event. The winner and runner-up of the Grand Prix series will earn their spot at the 2016 Candidate's Tournament.

Round Five

Karjakin, Sergey ½-½ Kasimdzhanov, Rustam
Karjakin employed some system that allowed Kasimdzhanov to make the position symmetrical and life-less. With subsequent trades the endgame became a clear draw.

Karjakin is one of the most solid players at the top

Gelfand, Boris ½-½ Tomashevsky, Evgeny
Tomashevsky keeps relying on his trusty Stone Wall setups. He had some issues today, but nothing major. After sacrificing a pawn in an accurately calculated sequence Tomashevsky obtained sufficient compensation. Gelfand gave the pawn back and the resulting endgame was drawn.

With these results Gelfand keeps his lead, tied with Caruana

Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ Dominguez, Leinier
The game eventually reached an endgame where White had two extra pawns, but with the reduced amount of material and his inability to trade any more (the opposite colored bishop endgames were all drawn despite the material advantage due to the wrong bishop and rook pawn type of endgames). Nakamura tried for a while but Dominguez had no problems defending.

Dominguez did not have to suffer much, despite being down two pawns

Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar ½-½ Grischuk, Alexander
The players repeated a line from Gelfand-Svidler earlier this year. In that game Gelfand obtained a strong advantage, but in this one Mamedyarov obtained nothing and in another opposite colored bishop endgame the players agreed to a draw.

Mamedyarov has been unable to get advantages with White

Radjabov, Teimour ½-½ Caruana, Fabiano
The Lasker proved to be too solid. Caruana simplified the game to a draw very easily.

Radjabov has has an ultra solid five draw tournament

Caruana is now 15 points away from Carlsen

Svidler, Peter ½-½ Andreikin, Dmitry
Another opposite colored bishop position, though this one seemed somewhat dangerous for Andreikin. At the end, Svidler didn't push too hard and it was just a draw.

Svidler could have tried for something at the very end, but chose not to

Round Five Games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Standings

Schedule

Links Official tournament site All Games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.