2017 London Chess Classic, Round 5: More Draws, and Caruana Wins Again

Fabiano Caruana enjoyed some good fortune on the way to defeating Viswanathan Anand and taking a full point lead over the rest of the field, but he cashed in on his opportunity while Magnus Carlsen failed to take home the full point against Wesley So. It's conceivable that the round could have finished with Carlsen and Anand tied for first on +1 ahead of a big group on 50%; instead, Caruana is +2, Anand and Sergey Karjakin are -1, and the other seven players are on 50%.

As usual, three games finished in approximately 30 moves - today it was Levon Aronian and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Karjakin, and Michael Adams and Hikaru Nakamura who had the short games. This doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of effort, but the games of the round were clearly the two mentioned in the first paragraph.

The games, with some comments to Caruana-Anand and Carlsen-So, are here.

Thursday is a rest day; on Friday, action will resume. Here are the pairings for round 6:

• Adams (2.5) - Nepomniachtchi (2.5)
• Nakamura (2.5) - Carlsen (2.5)
• So (2.5) - Aronian (2.5)
• Vachier-Lagrave (2.5) - Caruana (3.5)
• Anand (2) - Karjakin (2)