FIDE Grand Swiss, Round 5: Firouzja, Najer, and Shirov Lead with 4 Points Apiece
Sunday, October 31, 2021 at 11:33PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2021 FIDE Grand Swiss, Alexei Shirov, Alireza Firouzja, Evgeny Najer, Fabiano Caruana

As usual, there have been lots of draws on the top boards of the FIDE Grand Swiss, so a huge number of players are within striking distance of the lead. Alireza Firouzja continues to lead after his draw, but he has been caught by Evgeniy Najer and - a blast from the past - Alexei Shirov. They each have four points, good for a half point lead over 14 other players, including Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Yu Yangyi, and youngsters Samuel Sevian and Nihal Sarin. All the aforementioned players feature in the pairings for the top 5 boards of round 6: Shirov-Firouzja, Najer-Caruana, MVL-Ponkratov, Sevian-Yu, and Sarin-Navara.

Six rounds remain to determine two more slots for the 2022 Candidates. For now, here are three games from round 5, with my comments.

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