Gibraltar, Round 5: Nakamura Leads Alone with 5/5
Wei Yi had his chances against Renier Vazquez Igarza, but when he failed to convert his advantage Hikaru Nakamura was the sole leader after round 5, thanks to his win against Baskaran Adhiban. Nakamura used an interesting exchange sac against in the Queen's Gambit Accepted first used by Romain Edouard, and after Adhiban made a couple of errors in the opening Nakamura quickly achieved a winning endgame. A slip or two could have given Adhiban some hopes of a draw, but he didn't manage to take advantage of them. Nakamura is now 5-0, and is a win away from reclaiming from Wesley So his place as the United States's #1 player.
In addition to Wei Yi and Vazquez Igarza, there are several other 4.5 pointers. There's Yu Yangyi (the recent surprise winner of the Qatar Masters in December, where he beat Anish Giri and Vladimir Kramnik in successive rounds), David Howell (who is quietly sneaking up on the 2700 barrier), and none other than Veselin Topalov, who will be Nakamura's opponent in round 6. That will be entertaining.
In the America watch (besides Nakamura), Aleks Lenderman drew comfortably with Black against Pentala Harikrishna to reach 4-1, and with a win playing down Daniel Naroditsky is on that score as well. The next group of U.S. players is at 3-2, and includes the relatively young Irina Krush and the relatively old James Tarjan and John Watson.
Tournament site here.
Reader Comments (1)
I showed the Adhiban-Nakamura game to one of my students today. In the course of checking into the brief history of that exchange sac, I find that the first recorded master game with the position after 8...Bb7 in my database is a lonely example from 1993, and after that essentially nothing except a couple of email correspondence games from around 2002, until we reach Genzling-Donchenko, played in March of 2014. Hammer-Edouard wasn't until May of last year, so I don't think Edouard should be given credit for this development, though he may have fleshed out the bulk of the analysis (Alejandro Ramirez alluded to a CBM article by Edouard on the subject, which I haven't seen myself).
I like this line because it's an interesting example of a readily digestible concrete variation with a history that's still in the early stages--almost all of the significant games have been played in the last 12 months. The special treat is the fact that we were always taught when we were young that Black couldn't really get away with that ...b7-b5 stuff to hang onto the pawn so tightly, precisely because of the pin on the a-file. And here come a couple of the world's best players forcing us to challenge that basic assumption.