2018 Grenke Chess Classic, Rounds 5 & 6: Still a Troika on Top

The last three rounds of the Grenke Chess Classic have been draw-heavy, but not for want of effort. Round 4 was already covered in the preceding post; now we'll have a look at rounds 5 and 6.

In round 5, all five games were drawn, including those featuring the leaders. There were two games, not featuring the leaders, which could and should have finished with a winner. Georg Meier was beating Magnus Carlsen after the world champion was enticed by a dubious tactical trick (30...Qf5 31.Rf1 Ba6). Fortunately for Carlsen, White's wins weren't entirely obvious, and as they arose on move 39, right before the time control, Meier may not have had the time and peace he needed to spot the subtle points within the winning variations.

That was a fortunate escape for Carlsen, but not nearly as lucky as Matthias Bluebaum's save against Arkadij Naiditsch. Bluebaum's 19...Bxd3 was a terrible move, giving his opponent a crushing attack for an irrelevant pawn. Fortunately for Bluebaum, Naiditsch went for the flashy 23.Rxg7, sacrificing a rook, when the boring 23.f4 would have won quickly and at no cost. White was still winning even after giving away a rook, but further errors and inaccuracies resulted in an ending where the win was no longer easy, and in fact the game soon petered out into equality.

With all five games drawn, the status quo was maintained. In round 6 there were a pair of decisive games, but neither affected the top of the crosstable, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Nikita Vitiugov, and Fabiano Caruana remain in clear first with +2 scores. Vitiugov played Vachier-Lagrave, enjoying a slight-to-moderate advantage throughout in a game that was played to bare kings. Caruana, however, was in grave danger, worse and at times losing on the White side of a Petroff(!) against Hou Yifan(!). Apparently Caruana's favorite black opening against 1.e4 is so strong that he doesn't know what to do against it either. He had to suffer for a very long time to save the game, but since tomorrow's a rest day he'll have a chance to recover before round 7.

Turning to the decisive games, Meier stood well against Naiditsch in a very sharp game, but fell asleep (not literally) on move 33. White had a number of reasonable options, and they all had in common that they enabled him to defend against threats on the a8-h1 diagonal. Instead, Meier played 33.cxb6, completely missing Black's idea. After 33...Qb7, it was already time for White to resign, and he did.

The other decisive game was a big upset, with bottom-seed Bluebaum beating former world champion Viswanathan Anand. Anand equalized with Black out of the opening, but still needed to be a little careful about his a- and b-pawns. I've seen Anand use little tactics to "kill" a position (i.e. make it a dead draw) on countless occasions, but this time he miscalculated and lost material. He tried sacrificing a piece for a couple of pawns, one a far-advanced passer, but it wasn't enough. The youngster (Bluebaum will turn 21 in a week and a half) won and made it back to 50%.

The games of the last two rounds are here (with some annotations by me). Tomorrow (Saturday) is a rest day, and on Sunday the pairings for round 7 are as follows:

• Naiditsch (2.5) - Carlsen (3.5)
• Anand (2) - Meier (1.5)
• Hou Yifan (2) - Bluebaum (3)
• Vachier-Lagrave (4) - Caruana (4)
• Aronian (3.5) - Vitiugov (4)