Isle of Man, Round 4: Mostly Draws on the Top Boards
Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 10:43PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2017 Isle of Man

There are no more perfect scores, as the four players coming into the round 3-0 drew their games. Rustam Kasimdzhanov split the point with Magnus Carlsen, and Aleks Lenderman did the same against his World Cup victim (and defending Isle of Man champion) Pavel Eljanov. Lenderman had the best chances of the four to collect a full point, but in the end could do no better than draw with an extra pawn in a rook ending.

Most of the players with 2.5/3 drew, but three players made it to 3.5: Julio Grand Zuniga, Laurent Fressinet, and Santosh Gujrathi Vidit. A huge group of 28 players is another half a point behind.

In other stories: Vladimir Kramnik defeated a very low-rated player (by his standards) to get back to 50%, while James Tarjan played very well for most of the game against Niclas Huschenbeth before finally going astray and losing in a double rook ending. In her fourth consecutive game with a female opponent, Hou Yifan won to get back to +1, and in round 5 she is playing...no one. At first I thought she might have withdrawn in protest, but it seems she has taken a half-point bye for the round.

Some top pairings for round 5:

 

 

Fressinet (3.5) took a half-point bye.

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