It has been a rough tournament for Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura. Both are -2, with Karjakin losing in rounds 1 and 2 and Nakamura doing so in rounds 3 and 4. Nakamura's troubles today came at the hands of his countryman, Fabiano Caruana, who joined what is now a five-way tie for first at +1 with the win. (He has also leapfrogged Shakhriyar Mamedyarov to regain the #2 spot on the live rating list - or at least that's what it will say when the site's proprietor awakens and fixes the mistaken report that Caruana-Nakamura was drawn. It wasn't.)
The game was a slightly offbeat Catalan line that Nakamura has played before, and that appeared with one slight difference in the game between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin two rounds ago. Caruana's 14.0-0-0 was something new, and Nakamura gradually allowed Caruana to obtain a slight edge. That's more or less how things remained until near the time control, when Nakamura wrongly played for activity with 35...f5 and especially 36...fxe4. Then he was in serious trouble, and soon he was lost. All his pawns were weak, his bishop was useless, and his king was in big trouble. The position could not be held.
In the other four games, by contrast, everything was held. Carlsen had a micro-edge with Black against Viswanathan Anand, but he couldn't turn it into anything tangible given Anand's excellent defense. Wesley So and Karjakin never had more than very slight chances for an edge against each other in their game, and Mamedyarov's game with Levon Aronian looked fated for a draw from the start (which was almost the finish). Finally, Alexander Grischuk's game with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was also short in the number of moves - only 25 - but lively. MVL played his beloved Najdorf - the Delayed Poisoned Pawn in particular, for the second time in two days - and played a novelty on move 17 that improved on, or at least varied from, the move he played against Anish Giri a year ago. There were plenty of tactical possibilities for Grischuk to work through, and he burned lots of time on the clock before heading for a repetition. For Vachier-Lagrave it was probably just remembering what was in his notebook, and so he used almost no time for the game. (Najdorf fans, if you're not following MVL's games closer than your own you're going to get into serious trouble.)
Today's games, with my notes, are here. Tomorrow's pairings are:
Unfortunately, there isn't any way for tomorrow's action to produce a six- or even a seven-way tie for first, but with four rounds after this one (and a rest day) time remains for this "dream" scenario.