London Rd5: All games drawn, Gelfand continues to lead

The First FIDE Grand Prix is taking place from September 21 to October 3rd in Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, London. The games start at 14:00h local time (= 15:00h CEST, 17:00h Moscow, 09:00 a.m. New York). The tournament has a prize fund of 240,000 Euros.

Round five report

Today is the last game before the first free day. So far, we have only one leader: Boris Gelfand. Due to Yom Kippur, Boris and Shakhriyar had to start the game at 1 p.m. Ivanchuk, who arrived a bit earlier to watch the game, was surprised by the pawn sacrifice from Boris at the very beginning of the game. It ended in a draw after 34 moves.

Vasily Ivanchuk (above left) was probably inspired by this and started in an aggressive mood, playing h4-h5 against the Gruenfeld Defence of Alexander Grischuk (right). The Russian GM decided to play naturally and placed his pieces in the centre. After 15 moves, the position appeared quite balanced. The main action appeared to be on the h-file, and both players repeated the moves by a continuous attack on the queen. Draw in 26 moves.

Wang Hao came up with a new idea in the Meran defence today, quickly installing a powerful knight on e5, with the d4 and f4 pawns behind it. Rustam Kasimdzhanov decided quickly to sacrifice a pawn for the activity, putting pressure on the white king in the centre. The bishop on g7 combined with action from the two rooks was very unpleasant for Hao, who was probably pretty happy to exchange most of the pieces, leading in a drawn endgame.

Nakamura came with a fresh and surprising opening today, playing 3…Nge7 in the Ruy Lopez – the so-called Cozio Defence. Both players were playing very slowly and spending an hour each for the first six moves. Black looked in good shape by putting all his pawns on black squares. Hikaru took the advantage but played the inaccurate 37…Qf6, letting Leinier get back into the game. Strangely, during time trouble Nakamura blocked his bishop on a2 and ended with a significantly worse position. As a result, Leinier, step by step, took the advantage, but missed a great chance to bag the point on move 69 (and again two moves later).

We had a very theoretical fight in a Queen’s Indian played between Topalov and Leko. After 18 moves Topalov had just spent five minutes of his time, and Leko 25 minutes. On move 20, Topalov decided to go for an exchange sacrifice, which was declined by the Hungarian GM. The rook was en prise for a few moves, with both players ignoring it. After a few moves, Leko finally took the exchange on move 22, and tried to make a blockade on the d4 square. Topalov found a good attack but in time trouble Leko managed to exchange queens and the endgame finished in a draw…

For the third time in the tournament, Anish Giri (above right) played the Petrov Defence. Adams surprised his opponent on the eighth move, obliging the young Dutch prodigy to spend more than 20 minutes on his reply. Finally, Adams went for the usual long castling and actually had nothing significant out of the opening. Anish equalized and methodically exchanged the rooks on the e-file, entering into a bishop endgame. Draw in 34 moves.

All photos by Ray Morris-Hill

Veselin Topalov-Peter Leko

Daniel King analyses the game Topalov - Leko

Video stream of the whole game

Post-game interviews with Peter Leko and Veselin Topalov [by Macauley Peterson]

• Video stream of all the games

Standings after five rounds

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site Live games and video from London 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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