Wijk aan Zee 2018, Round 5: Anand, Giri, and Mamedyarov Lead Heading into the First Rest Day

We'll catch up on the earlier rounds soon, maybe even tonight, but let's begin with round five. This round makes a misnomer of my subject line, as it was played in Hilversum, and between the inconvenience of travel and the anticipation of tomorrow's rest day it might have inspired some of the players to take an unofficial day off. Jones-Giri and Matlakov-Karjakin won't bring any new fans into the chess world. Anand's draw with Wei Yi was short but real, as far as I can tell: it looks like spectacularly good preparation by Black rather than mutual non-aggression.

The other four games were harder fought, and three had a decisive outcome. The marquee matchup between Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik was a long draw that was always around equal. Kramnik outplayed Carlsen a little bit, but only enough to get the better half of a drawn rook ending. It was a good, correct game in which Kramnik correctly did what Carlsen always does: try to draw blood from a stone.

Now to the decisive games. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Peter Svidler both won, against Fabiano Caruana and Hou Yifan, respectively, and in both cases their opponents fell apart in time trouble. For Caruana it was grave time trouble, and what was an equal position after 27 moves was lost after 32. Svidler's game was shocking. He was clearly better early on, and missed an almost trivial win on move 22 that would have ended the game immediately. After a further error the position was equal, and the players kept exchanging mistakes as they approached the time control. After Svidler's 38.Rc7 (which was tricky but objectively bad) Black could have saved the game with 38...Nxh3+ 39.Kh2 Rxe5!, but she missed this and resigned right after the time control.

Finally, Wesley So ground out a win against Baskaran Adhiban in a rook ending. Like the games described in the previous paragraph, there were some serious errors here too that shifted the evaluation back and forth, and Adhiban made the final mistake.

The games, with my comments, are here. On now to the pairings for round 6, on Friday:

• Hou Yifan (.5) - Karjakin (2.5)
• Caruana (1.5) - Matlakov (2.5)
• Adhiban (1) - Mamedyarov (3.5)
• Wei Yi (2.5) - So (3)
• Giri (3.5) - Anand (3.5)
• Kramnik (3) - Jones (2.5)