Tal Memorial, Round 4: Five Draws (UPDATED: Annotated Games Now Included)
Monday, November 8, 2010 at 1:49PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Tal Memorial 2010

No time today for game analysis, at least right now, so I'll just report the results and my superficial impressions for now and leave it at that. [UPDATE: I've since annotated the games - see link at the bottom.]

Nakamura briefly had Kramnik on the ropes, but it was a crazy position and Kramnik escaped. Gelfand - Grischuk was also crazy, and judging by Grischuk's body language at the end he must have felt that he had Gelfand at one point.

Mamedyarov - Aronian was less wild and at least superficially didn't seem to have one player or the other miss any big chances. That game ended relatively quickly, unlike Karjakin - Shirov and Wang Hao - Eljanov. In both cases Black (the two 0-3 players) had to suffer a long time before scraping out their half points.

Standings After Round 4:

1. Aronian 3

2-6. Karjakin, Wang Hao, Mamedyarov, Nakamura, Grischuk 2.5

7. Kramnik 2

8. Gelfand 1.5

9-10. Shirov, Eljanov .5

Round 5 Pairings (on Wednesday; tomorrow is a rest day):

Shirov - Nakamura

Aronian - Karjakin

Grischuk - Mamedyarov

Eljanov - Gelfand

Kramnik - Wang Hao

Official site here. (UPDATE: Annoted games here.)

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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