Sinquefield 06: Nakamura Brilliant!

2015 Sinquefield Cup This super-GM single Round Robin brings together some of the best players in the world. This is the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour. The players – Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Fabiano Caruana (USA), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Alexander Grischuk (Russia), Anish Giri (Netherlands), Viswanathan Anand (India), Wesley So (USA). The venue is the Chess Club and Scholastic Center at 4657 Maryland Avenue, Saint Louis, MO 63108. Tickets can be purchased at the Saint Louis Chess Club.

Round Six

Daniel King shows the game of the day from round 6: So vs Nakamura

The hall was packed...

So was downstairs...

and even outside!

What a way to reignite the tournament after the rest day on Friday. The players took it easy and had time to heavily prepare for today’s round. This is an approach that not every grandmaster takes, as some think that too heavy of preparation is counterproductive. Something that we actually had the pleasure of witnessing today!

It is not every day that in a super grandmaster tournament there are so many sacrifices in one round. MVL’s sacrificed a pawn, Caruana sacrificed a piece, but the brilliancy of the round was clearly Nakamura’s sacrifice of basically every piece he had!

The first couple of results of round six were far from interesting. Many predicted that while Aronian would push slightly against Carlsen, he would try to do so with minimal risk and minimal chance of succeeding. In effect, the World Champion was able to equalize without difficulties and the game was drawn.

Levon Aronian discussing the game with Maurice Ashley

Giri seemed to obtain a slightly more pleasant position from the opening due to his pair of bishops. However, Anand was ultra-solid behind his Slav setup. His control of key dark squares also helped him out in the game. Giri misplayed his position very slightly and allowed Anand to exchange one of his bishops which then resulted in a dead drawn endgame.

Anand's position was uncomfortable for a small amount of time

Wesley So having a dark tournament

Wesley So played a very strange game. He confidently blitzed out twenty moves of theory, clearly prepared. Unfortunately, after that every move he played lasted at least fifteen minutes and were rather unconvincing. At one point it was clear that he had violated a couple of positional rules, or maybe twenty, and he was punished with a brilliancy. Nakamura sacrificed everything, including the kitchen sink, and mated So on g6 in a must-see game.

a masterpiece

Naka is 1/2 behind the leaders, same as Giri and MVL

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was able to outplay Topalov in a very clean game. It was almost a perfect Berlin endgame from White in which Black’s pieces were never able to coordinate. White got a brilliantly timed e6 break, and everything just went south for the Bulgarian. MVL cleaned up without problems.

MVL admitted to not knowing the Saric game in the postmortem

Last to finish was a thrilling battle between Grischuk and Caruana which left the American player unhappy. He played a strong and resourceful piece sacrifice to shatter his opponent’s structure and obtain a lasting initiative, but his misplayed it badly. His move b5?! simply helped his opponent’s queen to improve, and though it is true that the correct continuation was scary, he simply had to go for it. As the game progressed, it became obvious that White was simply up a piece.

You know something is up when Grischuk has more time than his opponent

Standings

Round Six Games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Photos by Lennart Ootes

Pairings

Games start at 1 p.m. local time (20:00h CEST, 22:00h Moscow, Thursday 12:30 New Delhi, 03:00h Tokyo, 04:00 Canberra – check your location here).

Playoffs, if necessary, will be on the 2nd at 1pm.

The games will be broadcast live on Playchess, with expert analysis (see schedule below).

Broadcast Schedule