As the say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Boris Gelfand and Fabiano Caruana shared first in the Grand Prix tournament in Baku a couple of weeks ago, but just shy of the halfway point of the Tashkent Grand Prix they are at the bottom of the pack. Gelfand is tied for last place with Rustam Kasimdzhanov, while Caruana is only half a point ahead of him. On the other hand, Hikaru Nakamura tied for third in Baku, and this time he's doing even better - he is in clear first with 3.5 points out of 5.
Let's recap a round at a time, starting with round 3.
Teimour Radjabov - Maxime Vachier-Lagrave: A deeply theoretical Byrne Attack Najdorf with a novelty by Black on move 26. White obtained some edge in the endgame, but MVL had surely worked in advance that it was a draw. That was made official on move 41.
Sergey Karjakin - Dmitry Jakovenko: A sort of reversed Gruenfeld gave Karjakin a slight pull that Jakovenko never managed to extinguish. He tried to sac a pawn in the hopes of drawing a Marshall Gambit-style ending with the bishop pair vs. bishop and knight (plus a pair of rooks), but to no avail. Karjakin won quickly and convincingly.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - Boris Gelfand: A somewhat strange game. When Mamedyarov avoided a normal Gruenfeld with 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.e3 Gelfand steered the game towards a kind of Modern Benoni, which isn't a typical opening for the classically-oriented grandmaster. Mamedyarov took control and seemed on the way to victory until he traded queens. (31.Qb6 would have kept Black in serious trouble.) Afterwards Mamedyarov kept practical chances, though a draw would have been the correct result. The decisive moment came when Gelfand played 47...Rxg2?, losing; 47...Kd6! would have held the balance. Mamedyarov played the remainder perfectly and won by a single tempo.
Hikaru Nakamura - Anish Giri: A 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian that saw Black suffer from the get-go. Nakamura was better throughout and made Giri suffer all the way until he stalemated him on move 79. Very impressive defense by Giri!
Fabiano Caruana - Dmitry Andreikin: A Berlin ending. Caruana tried to improve on his game with Nakamura from the Sinquefield Cup with the near-novelty 15.Nge4. I don't know if he missed anything or forgot part of his preparation, but Andreikin managed to equalize and even press a little (very little) by the end. No revenge for Caruana for the defeat he suffered at his opponent's hands near the end of the Baku event.
Rustam Kasimdzhanov - Baadur Jobava: Most people play the Rubinstein French to draw or at least to head for a positional struggle where they can hope to outplay their opponents in 50 moves; most people, but not Jobava. The Georgian GM loves to go his own way in the opening, and so he did here with the very unusual 8...g6. This served as a provocation to Kasimdzhanov, the nominal home player, and he went for blood with 9.c4 and 10.d5. He enjoyed some compensation for the sacrificed pawn, but nothing too special. By his 24th move it has mostly dried up, but he was probably counting on 24.Bxa7 to recover his material. He might have missed that after 24...b6 25.Bxd5 Black had the zwischenzug 25...Nd4!, but it's even more likely that after 26.Qa4 Rxd5 27.Qa6 it was 27...Qd7! that eluded his vision. This threatened both 28...Nf3+ and 28...Ra8 (27...Ra8 would have been met by 28.Bxb6), and forced White to give up the exchange without any compensation, and soon Black won.
Round 4 was calmer. Gelfand - Jakovenko and Andreikin - Kasimdzhanov were both short QGD draws. Giri - Caruana was also a short draw, in an unusual Catalan, but White had a little something and put Caruana under more pressure than Jakovenko and Kasimdzhanov experienced in their games. Continuing with the theme of short draws in the Queen's Gambit complex, Mamedyarov and Nakamura split the point in an Exchange QG with 5.Bf4. Mamedyarov went for 9.h5, which hasn't been achieving much lately on account of Karpov's 9...Nh6; my impression is that 9.g5 is, and is considered, the more dangerous move these days. Whatever the truth is in the opinion of super-GMs these days, Mamedyarov got nothing from the opening. A good fight ensued, with a peaceful conclusion.
The other games were also drawn. Jobava pressed a little against Radjabov in a 4.Bg5 Gruenfeld, but never came too close to winning. Vachier-Lagrave was the only near-winner in the round. He won a pawn against Karjakin and had him under heavy pressure, but couldn't couldn't strike a decisive blow in an ending with queens and opposite-colored bishops.
That brought the players to their first rest day, and today they showed themselves ready to rejoin the fight. The shortest game was a decisive one, seeing Karjakin fall quickly against Jobava. Karjakin's 16.Bd2 invited his opponent to sac a bishop on h3 and Jobava obliged - correctly. White had no advantage whatsoever, but plenty of chances to go wrong. His first misstep was 20.c5, and other inaccuracies ensued from both players - though in every case the variance was from equality to a significant but non-decisive Black advantage. The end came only with 30.Ne2?? (30.Nh3 was forced), possibly in time trouble. That allowed 30...Rxe2, and Karjakin resigned a move later. The rook couldn't be taken because of 31...Qg1#, but not taking it wasn't much help either.
The second winner was Jakovenko, who was able to torture Vachier-Lagrave on the white side of a Gruenfeld sideline. MVL sacced first one pawn and then another for play, but in the end he was just down a couple of pawns for nothing. In the end Jakovenko returned the material with interest, but in so doing ensured himself of an easy victory, as the Black rook couldn't deal with the two connected passed pawns supported by White's king and knight.
The big winner was Nakamura, who ground poor Gelfand down in a 97 move game. Gelfand never quite managed to neutralize White's tiny initiative, which by move 46 became an extra pawn in an ending with rook, knight and four kingside pawns vs. rook, knight and three kingside pawns. In such an ending the trade of knights would generally result in a manageable draw while a rook trade would result in a likely win for Nakamura. So each player avoided his unfavorable exchange whlie Nakamura tacked here and there, and he finally broke on move 87. 87....Kg8 88.Rxf6 Ra4 would have saved the game (or at least kept it going indefinitely), but 87...Ng5 88.Rxf6+ Kg8 89.e5 was winning.
This post is in danger of taking as long to read as Nakamura-Gelfand took to play, so I'll be very brief about the drawn games: Kasimdzhanov - Giri (first Giri and then Kasimdzhanov had some chances), Caruana - Mamedyarov (Caruana quickly worse with White but Mamedyarov let him off the hook relatively easily) and Radjabov - Andreikin (an easy hold for Black in a Berlin ending). All the games (a few with pretty trivial notes) can be replayed here.
Round 6 Pairings:
- Gelfand (1.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (3)
- Jobava (3) - Jakovenko (2.5)
- Andreikin (3) - Karjakin (2.5)
- Giri (2.5) - Radjabov (2.5)
- Mamedyarov (2.5) - Kasimdzhanov (1.5)
- Nakamura (3.5) - Caruana (2)