Shamkir Round five: The Steamrollers

Third Shamkir Tournament in memory of Vugar Gashimov

The Vugar Gashimov Memorial, is being held in Shamkir, Azerbaijan, from the May 26 to June 4, 2016, in memory of the great Vugar Gashimov, who passed away on the 10th of January 2014. The tournament features ten world-class players: Fabiano Caruana (2795), Anish Giri (2790), Sergey Karjakin (2779), Pavel Eljanov (2750), Pentala Harikrishna (2763), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2750), Teimour Radjabov (2726), Eltaj Safarli (2664), Hou Yifan (2663) and Rauf Mamedov (2650). The time control is 120/40 moves + 60/20 moves + 15 minutes + 30 seconds/move at 61st move.

All games start at 3 p.m. local time = 1 p.m. in Europe (CEST), one hour earlier in Britain, and 2 p.m. in Moscow. You can find the starting time at your location here. Today's pairings:

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Round Five

The distance between the leaders and the bottom of the table continues to grow. Eljanov's tournament is becoming a nightmare, Yifan is unable to find her pacing, and Giri would be the news of the tournament if it weren't for the fact that Caruana seems to be headed for his second epiphany.

Four decisive games out of four! Azerbaijanis playing each other don't count, of course

Safarli, Eltaj 0-1 Giri, Anish
Safarli seemed to be holding his ground, but at some point he just started playing too passively. Giri saw that the tactics worked in his favor, gained the initiative and found a swift mating attack in a queenless position.

2958 performance! #4 in the World!

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Radjabov, Teimour
Simply put, a fabulous combination of positional chess and attacking destruction.

3096 performance! 2818 live rating! #2 in the World!

Simply no match for the Fabi steamroller

Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar ½-½ Mamedov, Rauf
The players repeated 24 moves of Ponomariov-Shirov, 2011 and then drew three moves after that.

The most interesting game of the round, as you can see by the player's poses

Karjakin, Sergey 1-0 Hou Yifan
The candidate for the World Championship match was simply outplayed by Hou Yifan. However, when the key moment came, she failed to find the best continuation and found herself in a worst endgame. Even in the position down a piece I am not totally sure that she was losing, and it was even more complicated had she found the way not to get her king stuck on the last rank, but as it was Yifan erred and lost the game.

To say that Sergey today was against the ropes would be putting it mildly

It's clear that Yifan can play with the top brass, but she needs to fix her accuracy

Harikrishna, Pentala 1-0 Eljanov, Pavel
The nightmare continues for Pavel Eljanov.

Pentala took advantage of a huge blunder by Eljanov in what had been a very complicated game

Round Five Games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Standings

Schedule and results

Live commentary on Playchess

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN (courtesy TWIC) 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 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.