The Week in Chess

The fifth round of the Tata Steel Masters took place in the Philips Stadion of PSV in Eindhoven. By the finish of the round Alireza Firouzja had joined Wesley So in the lead on 3.5/5.

Firouzja beat Anish Giri in the longest game of the day. An interesting Queen's Gambit with 3...Be7 looked to be heading for a draw before Giri made life difficult for himself with 35...Re8 (35...Bb6 keeping the bishop was the way to go) after which he was gradually ground down. Wesley So seemed reasonably happy to draw quickly as black against Vladislav Kovalev.

Viswanathan Anand won his first game of the tournament beating Jeffery Xiong in a sharp French Defence where he looked very much at home in the complications.

There were mind-bending complications when Jan-Krzysztof Duda went for a sacrificial attack against Vladislav Artemiev, computers show the attack could have been refuted (eg. 24...fxg4) but it was obviously much harder over the board, the game eventually fizzled out into a drawn pawn endgame. Fabiano Caruana must have been winning straight out of the opening against Jorden Van Foreest but couldn't put his opponent away and he could briefly have been in trouble towards the end. Most likely Van Foreest was happy enough to escape. Magnus Carlsen's frustrations continued with a fifth draw, this time against his former second Daniil Dubov. Carlsen was highly critical of his 17.Nc4 (17.Nf1 and he liked his chances although he conceded it wasn't much objectively) and although worse he was never in danger of losing and even turned down a draw (very optimistically) later on. Nikita Vitiugov looked to be getting somewhere against Yu Yangyi's Catalan but this came to nothing and a draw was agreed in 24 moves.

Round 5 Standings: 1st-2nd So, Firouzja 3.5pts, 3rd-5th Caruana, Van Foreest, Artemiev 3pts 6th Xiong, Duda, Carlsen, Anand, Dubov 2.5pts, 11th-12th Giri, Vitiugov 2pts, 13th Yu, 1.5pts 14th Kovalev 1pt.

Round 6 Pairings Fri 17th Jan 12:30pm: Dubov - Artemiev, So - Duda, Giri - Kovalev, Yu - Firouzja, Xiong - Vitiugov, Van Foreest - Anand, Carlsen - Caruana.