The Chess Mind

That's five in a row for Ivanchuk, whose current TPR is a ridiculous 3537. (This seems more a quirk of the system when a player's score is at 100% - even if he scores 9.5/10 that number will drop significantly.) His fifth win was a surprisingly easy one, with Black against Aronian, but it seemed less a matter of his brilliance and more that Aronian's novelty and the next few moves afterwards were suspicious at best.

Despite Ivanchuk's tremendous success so far, Topalov is not out of range. He won easily against Bu Xiangzhi, who is finding himself outclassed so far. (This happens to almost everyone breaking into top-class events - not long ago Magnus Carlsen was getting whupped in these tournaments, and now he's winning them.) That leaves Topalov with a very respectable 3.5/5, a point and a half behind with five games to go.

The third game, Cheparinov-Radjabov, was an exciting draw in a Bayonet King's Indian. The game was dynamically balanced most of the way, but Cheparinov's errors on moves 30-32 gave Radjabov a winning position. Radjabov, who has understandably complained of exhaustion (he played in the FIDE Grand Prix event just before this tournament), returned the favor on move 34, and his opponent escaped with half a point.

Now the players get to enjoy their one rest day, after which they play the second round-robin. Can Ivanchuk make it 10 in a row? Probably not, but who knows? Meanwhile, it will be fun watching him try, and it would be nice if he could at least achieve a Fischerian 6-0 score.

Here are the games from round 5, with my comments.

Standings after Round 5:

1. Ivanchuk 5
2. Topalov 3.5
3-4. Radjabov, Cheparinov 2
5. Aronian 1.5
6. Bu Xiangzhi 1

Pairings for Round 6: (On Wednesday)

Topalov - Aronian
Bu Xiangzhi - Cheparinov
Ivanchuk - Radjabov

Tournament site here.