The Week in Chess

The 80th Tata Steel Masters visited the "Beeld en Geluid" in Hilversum for the fifth round. This is the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the players were greeted by members of the Sesame Street cast of which there is a Dutch version.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov joined the leaders by beating Fabiano Caruana. Caruana needed to find a series of accurate moves (28...h6 29.Rd4 f5=) instead after 28...Qc6 he lost a pawn and this was decisive. Peter Svidler needed two bites at the cherry to defeat a struggling Hou Yifan. Hou blundered badly with 20...Bd7? but Svidler allowed her right back into the game after not playing 22.Nc8 Ne6 23.Ng5 winning. 38.d3? was a decisive blunder in mutual time trouble. Wesley So ground down Baskaran Adhiban but was perhaps somewhat lucky as the decisive blunder almost within sight of the draw was 71.Kd8? (71.Kd6=).

Magnus Carlsen achieved nothing with white against Vladimir Kramnik who looked the better prepared, eventually Carlsen slipped to being worse and bailed out into a drawn endgaame where he had to suffer a little bit. Gawain Jones played the Panov attack against Anish Giri's Caro-Kann but this merely led to simplification and a draw he probably wanted. Viswanathan Anand found a hole in his preparation against Wei Yi's Petroff on the way to the venue. He decided to play the line anyway as a bluff and Wei Yi played all the way down the problem line to a comfortable draw. Maxim Matlakov and Sergey Karjakin played an uneventful draw.

Round 5 standings: 1st= Giri, Anand, Mamedyarov 3.5pts 4th= Kramnik, Carlsen, Wesley So 3pts 7th= Karjakin, Wei Yi, Matlakov, Jones, Svidler 2.5pts 12th Caruana 1.5pts 13th Adhiban 1pt 14th Hou Yifan 0.5pts

Rest day Thursday 18th Jan.

Round 6 pairings Friday 19th Jan 2018 12:30pm Hou Yifan-Karjakin, Caruana-Matlakov, Adhiban-Mamedyarov, Wei Yi-Wesley So, Giri-Anand, Kramnik-Jones, Svidler-Carlsen.