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Levon Aronian is simply on fire, and maybe by year's end he too will threaten or surpass Garry Kasparov's all-time rating record of 2851. (Of course it's pretty likely that Magnus Carlsen will pass it first, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Aronian follow suit.) Except for his round 3 loss to Carlsen, he is just about rolling the field and leads the A-group at Wijk aan Zee with a fine score of 4.5/6.
Aronian took the lead by defeating Vugar Gashimov on the white side of a Modern Benoni. Gashimov's queenside pawns got overextended, and when he lost the c-pawn White's extra pawn and bishop pair helped him to grind out the point.
Carlsen started the round tied with Aronian for the lead, and while he didn't win today it wasn't for want of effort. Carlsen equalized with Black against David Navara early on, and the game could very reasonably have been drawn after about 25 moves. Carlsen played and played (and played), but the only result was that he almost got into trouble later on in the game, and had to be a little accurate to save it. Finally, after 81 moves, the players split the point.
Teimour Radjabov caught up to Carlsen, half a point behind Aronian, by defeating Sergey Karjakin. Radjabov was pushing for a long time, but it was only when Karjakin fell into a neat trick near the end that White finally won. After 60.b6! Rxa4 61.b7 Rb4 62.Rc4+! it was time to resign, as 62...Bxc4 63.Nc2+ is followed by 64.Nxb4 and 65.b8Q. It was a nice tactic, but nothing an in-form Karjakin would have missed. His tournament has been quite odd thus far: two losses, two wins, and now two more losses.
Anish Giri beat Gata Kamsky in a long game, but it could have been much shorter had he played 24.Nxg4. Instead, he had to work hard in a superior but probably drawn ending, waiting for a mistake. Eventually that mistake came and the youngster won in 86 moves.
Another case of young guy beats older guy was the game Boris Gelfand-Hikaru Nakamura. Gelfand was fine in the opening, a Leningrad Dutch, but when he tried too hard - and took too long on the clock - looking for an advantage, he was ripe for the picking. Nakamura sharpened the game, and won when Gelfand blundered in time pressure.
Caruana-van Wely and Topalov-Ivanchuk were both drawn, though in both cases White had excellent winning chances.
Standings After Round 6 (of 13):
1. Aronian 4.5
2-3. Carlsen, Radjabov 4
4-7. Caruana, Giri, Ivanchuk, Nakamura 3.5
8-9. van Wely, Topalov 3
10. Gelfand 2.5
11-12. Kamsky, Karjakin 2.5
13-14. Navara, Gashimov 1.5
Round 7 Pairings:
- Karjakin - Topalov
- Nakamura - Radjabov
- Carlsen - Gelfand
- Kamsky - Navara
- van Wely - Giri
- Gashimov - Caruana
- Ivanchuk - Aronian
In Group B, Pentala Harikrishna reasserted himself after a couple of draws, defeating the previously resurgent Jan Timman. Harikrishna has 5/6, good for a one-point lead over Alexander Motylev.
In the C-group Maxim Turov was finally held to a draw (admittedly, it's only his second game so far against a titled opponent). Swedish GM Hans Tikkanen did the job, and they remain a point apart atop the leaderboard: Turov has 5.5/6, Tikkanen 4.5. Matthew Sadler remained stuck in his drawing rut, failing today to beat even the 2279-rated FM Etienne Goudriaan, and with the white pieces. (Admittedly, FMs sometimes have their days!) It was a really spectacular game though, and I wholeheartedly recommend my readers find it and even spend some time analyzing it. Sadler is tied for 4th-6th with 3.5 points.
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