Medias Kings Round six: Commentary by GM Rogozenco

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 six results

Commentary by GM Dorian Rogozenco

The rest day over, the players returned to the chess boards in Medias to start the second half of the Kings' Tournament. Nakamura-Carlsen was the first game to finish with a draw after the repetition of moves. Nakamura's attempt to surprise Carlsen in Ruy Lopez with the move 11.c4 didn't really pay off, as the Norwegian quickly achieved a comfortable equality. It looked like Black can fight for advantage, but at the press conference Carlsen recognized that he didn't feel very well before the game and therefore he went for simplifications and forced the draw by repetition.

The ceremonial first move in the game Nakamura-Carlsen is executed by Josu Fernández, the Organisation Director of the International Chess Festival “Villa de Bilbao”, which will be staging the Grand Slam of which the Medias Kings is part

Magnus in action, watched by Adrian Marcel Piteiu, CEO of RomGAZ

The second game to finish was Radjabov-Ivanchuk. The Ukrainian played the Semi-Tarrasch of the Queen's Gambit declined, which caught the Azerbaijani Grandmaster somewhat unprepared. Radjabov declared at the beginning of the tournament that he can still feel the tiredness after the Candidate matches in Kazan, therefore in today's game when faced with a situation to take a critical decision, he decided to avoid risks. White accepted a quiet endgame, which looked somewhat more pleasant for Black, but which in the end Radjabov held to a draw without visible efforts.

At the start of the game Radjabov vs Ivanchuk

The longest encounter of the sixth round was at the same time the only decisive game of the day. In Karjakin-Nisipeanu the Romanian played the Schliemann Gambit, which seems to become a popular opening in Kings' Tournament. On move 15 Karjakin prepared a novelty, which put pressure on Black. After a long thought Nisipenu sacrificed two pawns for activity of his pieces. He quickly won back one pawn, but never recovered the second one. Black's position was always very close to draw and at some moments Nisipeanu even missed more or less clear ways to escape. However, being under constant pressure and in time trouble Nisipeanu was forced to give up in the end. A hard-fought win for Sergey Karjakin, who together with Magnus Carlsen shares the 1-2 places with four points out of six games.

A friendly exchange between Karjakin and Nisipeanu before the start of the game

The game is symbolically started by Adrian Marcel Piteiu, CEO of RomGAZ

The hero of round six: Sergey Karjakin

All photos by Ionut Anisca for the organisation

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Standings after six rounds

Schedule and results

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