London 2011, Round 5: Nakamura, Kramnik and Anand Win
The London Chess Classic is shaping up very differently from some recent tournament I'm remembering to forget - there are wins in every round, and the overall percentage of draws is very low: just 35%. This is partially but not completely due to the abysmal form of 3/4 of the British contingent: Nigel Short, Michael Adams and David Howell have already lost three games apiece, while no other player has lost more than once. And so it was today.
Hikaru Nakamura defeated David Howell in a way characteristic of both players. Nakamura applied constant pressure on the white side of an English, and Howell played pretty well until his time trouble got too severe, and then collapsed.
Vladimir Kramnik has gone back to playing more solidly in this event; wisely, I think, as he needs to maintain a rating lead of more than seven points over Sergey Karjakin to assure himself of a spot in the next Candidates' cycle. Against Michael Adams today he didn't get anything from the opening or the early middlegame, for that matter, but Kramnik gradually wore him down. His successful use of the minority attack (culminating in 28.b5 cxb5 29.Rxb5) left Kramnik with plenty of targets to aim at with no risk at all, and eventually some of them fell. Kramnik went to +2, Adams to a startling -3.
Viswanathan Anand has been on a terrible run: absolutely uninspired play in the Tal Memorial, and a winless -1 here through four rounds. Today, at last, he took a step back to health, defeating Nigel Short with the black pieces. Short got nothing from his 3.Bb5+ Anti-Sicilian, but wasn't in any trouble either until he sent his knight out of play with 34.Na6. Its extraction cost him a pawn, and Anand had no trouble converting his advantage in the technical phase.
Finally, heirs apparent to the chess throne Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen played the round's only draw. Aronian had an edge, and perhaps 20.Nd6 or 27.b3 (among other possible improvements) would have given Carlsen more challenging problems to solve before he could save the point.
Standings After Round 5 (totals are based on the tournament's 3-1-0 scoring; the second number indicates the number of rounds played):
1. Nakamura 10 (5)
2. Carlsen 9 (5)
3-4. Kramnik, McShane 8 (4)
5-6. Aronian, Anand 5 (4)
7. Short 3 (4)
8. Adams, Howell 2 (5)
Round 6 Pairings:
- Adams - Aronian
- Anand - Kramnik
- Howell - Short
- McShane - Nakamura
- Carlsen - bye
Today's games, with my comments, are here.
Reader Comments (1)
Among the British players, Adams is certainly showing abysmal form, but I’m not so sure about Short and Howell – in the sense that perhaps this is simply a reflection of their true strength against the super-elite. Short got clobbered in London last year as well (losing to all the non-British + McShane) – the reason he reached the present tournament with a very respectable-looking rating of 2698 (well, a live rating of 2686 after his poor performance at the ETCC) is that during 2011 he scored many wins over 2300-2600 players in various open tournaments (e.g. Gibraltar, Thailand, South Africa), compensating for the many points he lost in London and then Reggio Emilia. Maybe he just isn’t cut out any more for playing in the strongest tournaments.
(Btw, I actually like Short a lot so I’m secretly hoping this would act as a reverse jinx for the remaining rounds…)