Medias Kings Rd5: Thrilling chess by all; Carlsen leads

ROMGAZ and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade” of Bucharest are staging a double round robin tournament with six top GMs: the world's second highest ranked player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway; Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk, currently the world's number five; Sergey Karjakin, former child prodigy and youngest GM of all time; top US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, clear winner of this year's Wijk aan Zee tournament; Teimour Radjabov, one of Azerbaijan's top GMs, and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, the best Romanian player. The competition is taking place from June 11th to 22nd 2011 in Medias, Romania.

Round five results

Commentary by GM Dorian Rogozenco

The last round of the first half of Kings’ Tournament turned out to be very exciting with two decisive games and one interesting draw. The curious thing is that both decisive games started with quiet openings, while Radjabov-Nakamura displayed a very sharp line in Sicilian Najdorf, which looked like anything but a draw. Nakamura’s opening preparation was impressive once again and Radjabov had a difficult task to find many precise moves over the board in a wild position. He managed it very well, but obviously was consuming more time than his opponent. The players entered an endgame with slightly better chances for Black, which Radjabov succeeded to hold rather confidently.

Carlsen-Nisipeanu was a Queen’s Gambit Accepted, the variation 7.dxc5, where White exchanges queens right in the opening. Then Nisipeanu mixed something up and produced a novelty that quickly led to an unpleasant position for Black, where White’s bishops’ pair dominated. Carlsen converted his advantage into a full point with an amazing ease.

Magnus Carlsen converting his advantage sith consummate ease

In Ivanchuk-Karjakin the Ukrainian chose a quiet line in Italian Game and it seems that there will be long maneuvering before (and if!) anything captivating could happen. Then suddenly Ivanchuk overlooked a well hidden tactical resource, which immediately secured Black a large advantage. Karjakin was precise until the end and won his first game in the Kings’ Tournament.

Thus after the first half of the tournament Carlsen is leading with 3.5 point out of five, Karjakin is in the sole second place with 3.0 points, Nakamura is alone third with 2.5 points and three players are sharing places 4-6 with 2.0 points each: Nisipeanu, Ivanchuk and Radjabov.

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Sergey Karjakin discussing his game with Dorian Rogozenco

Pleased as Punch after his stunning win over former compatriot Vassily Ivanchuk

Our commentator analyses with Magnus Carlsen minutes after the game

Standings after five rounds

Schedule and results

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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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