Palma Grand Prix, Rounds 3-5: Aronian Leading; MVL in a Six-Way Tie for Second
After five rounds of nine Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is close to the lead and still has a good chance of qualifying for the Candidates, but if the event finished right now he'd be out: the tie for second place is too large. Levon Aronian has 3.5/5, while Vachier-Lagrave has 3, tied with Hikaru Nakamura, Ding Liren, Peter Svidler, Pentala Harikrishna, and Dmitry Jakovenko.
The round 5 action was incredibly lame, with all nine games drawn, eight of them quickly. (Mostly very quickly, and MVL didn't exactly cover himself in glory with a 13-move draw, with White, against Nakamura.)
But the flip side is that round 4 was a thriller, with six decisive games and a lot of spectacular chess. Aronian seized the lead after bludgeoning Anish Giri on the white side of an English. Nakamura outplayed Teimour Radjabov in an important game, as Radjabov, like Vachier-Lagrave, is hoping to qualify for the Candidates with a sufficiently strong result here. Ding Liren beat Ernesto Inarkiev with the black pieces; this would have been an important victory had Ding not already qualified via the World Cup. Harikrishna crushed Francisco Vallejo Pons, Jakovenko ground down Pavel Eljanov with Black, and Richard Rapport won speedily with a kingside attack against Jon Ludwig Hammer. It was really a great round.
Round 3 was quieter, with only two victories: Hammer lost with White to Svidler, and Vallejo beat Boris Gelfand, who with Hammer is presently at the bottom of the tournament table with 1.5/5.
The games and full standings are here. Today (=Tuesday) is a rest day; they'll resume on Wednesday.