Here Come the Big Boys!

GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Tigran Petrosian, the top two seeded players in the event eventually managed to catch the leaders as they both won in round 5, against GMs Gilberto Hernandez and Darwin Laylo respectively, while all the leaders from the 4th round drew on the top two boards.

Both wins were very similar in style, winning a pawn as the games transitioned into the ending and then using their Grandmaster skills to convert the advantage into the full point. Nakamura's king and pawn ending had some educational value that we can all learn from.

Here Hernandez played 53. Rxg7 allowing a trade into the following king and pawn ending.

This position is apparently a well known win, so long as the black rook's pawn is on h7. If the pawn is on further up the board then the position is a draw!

Here white is in zugzwang. He is forced to push his pawn but he always gets the last move, e.g. 63. h4 h6! 64. h5 Kg3 and the white king has to move, or 63. h3 h5! 64.h4 Kg3 and again the white king has to move.

If the black pawn was on h6 then the position would be a draw, e.g. 63. h4 h5 stalemate or 63. h4 Kg3 64. h5 Kf3 stalemate. Don't say you don't learn anything by reading these reports! And, just incase you think Nakamura didn't know all this, check out the following game he played against Joel Benjamin in the World Open in 2005.

Nakamura,H (2657) - Benjamin,J (2563) [A21]
33rd World Open Philadelphia USA (5), 02.06.2005
1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Bb4 3.g3 Bxc3 4.bxc3 Nc6 5.Bg2 d6 6.d3 Nge7 7.Nh3 Bd7 8.f3 0-0 9.0-0 Ng6 10.e3 Qc8 11.Nf2 Nce7 12.Kh1 f5 13.f4 Bc6 14.Bxc6 Nxc6 15.Qf3 Qd7 16.Rb1 b6 17.h4 Rae8 18.h5 Nge7 19.h6 g6 20.e4 exf4 21.Bxf4 Ne5 22.Qg2 Ng4 23.Nxg4 fxg4 24.Bg5 Nc6 25.d4 Na5 26.c5 dxc5 27.dxc5 Nc4 28.cxb6 cxb6 29.Bf4 Qe6 30.Rbd1 Ne5 31.Bxe5 Qxe5 32.Rxf8+ Rxf8 33.Qe2 Qh5+ 34.Kg1 Qxh6 35.e5 Qg5 36.Qc4+ Kh8 37.Qd4 Kg8 38.e6 Qe7 39.Qxg4 Rf5 40.Qc4 b5 41.Rd8+ Rf8 42.Rxf8+ Kxf8 43.Qf4+ Kg7 44.Qe5+ Qf6 45.Qc7+ Kf8 46.Qc5+ Qe7 47.Qe5 Qd8 48.Qh8+ Ke7 49.Qxh7+ Kxe6 50.Qxg6+ Ke5 51.Qh5+ Ke6 52.Qxb5 Qd2 53.Qc4+ Kf5 54.Qf4+ Qxf4 55.gxf4 Kxf4

Look familiar?? It should! The game finished 56.Kf2 Ke4 57.Ke2 Kd5 58.Kd3 Kc5 59.c4 Kc6 60.Kd4 Kd6 61.c5+ Kc7 62.Kd5 Kd7 63.c6+ Kc7 64.Kc5 Kc8 65.Kd6 Kd8 66.c7+ Kc8 67.Kc6 a6 68.Kd6 a5 69.a4 1-0 (My thanks to Josh Friedel for all of this information while we were watching the finish to the Nakamura game.)

With the results we now have a 6-way tie at the top of the standings with 4 points: GMs Nakamura, Petrosian, Kolev, Mitkov, Yermolinsky and Zapata. The round 6 pairings should probably be... nah, don't think so!

The "quest" update sees Josh scoring a draw against GM Varuzhan Akobian which, according to my calculations, leaves him at +8.5 from the event with a starting estimate of 2489. I did however tell everyone that my counts here are totally unofficial right? Well, if not, I'm doing it now. Of course, if he'd just win the rest of his games we wouldn't have to keep track of this stuff.

Round 6 is on Monday starting at 10:00 am CST while round 7 is scheduled to start at 4:30 pm CST. Remember to also check out the photo gallery that now has over 30 photographs in it, although I will admit I have got lazy with the captions.

Chris Bird