Topalov Catches Vishy On Day 3 Of Champions Showdown
After three days, the two "veterans," Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov are currently leading the 2016 Champions Showdown with 3.5/6 as the classical portion of the event came to a close. Hikaru Nakamura is close behind with 3.0/6 while Fabiano Caruana struggles with just 2.0/6. Tomorrow the players will play six rapid games (double round-robin) followed by 12 blitz games on Monday.
Photos courtesy of the Saint Louis Chess Club.
Round 5
Caruana's woes continued this morning as he was unable to hold his defense against Nakamura in a Queen's Gambit Declined. In the post-game interview, he confessed to trying to make the game more interesting, but his pawn sacrifice fell short of creating enough counterplay and Nakamura was able to win a very clean technical game.
Meanwhile Anand and Topalov were involved in a turf war on all sides of the board. They saw a few fireworks before eventually liquidating into a drawish middlegame. Their draw allowed Nakamura to catch up to Anand in the lead after five rounds.
Round 6
Special guest commentator, Garry Kasparov showed up to provide thoughts on the event, and added his insights on Carlsen vs. Karjakin.
Today we will have special guest @Kasparov63 on our #ChampionsShowdown broadcast! Stay tuned at https://t.co/o8w71ZPMbV at 1 PM CT. pic.twitter.com/oLjgYtW2xA
— SaintLouis ChessClub (@CCSCSL) November 12, 2016
In round six, Topalov played one of the best games of the event thus far, launching a potent attack against Nakamura and displaying the full power of the opposite-color bishops in the middlegame:
With all of the excitement going on in this game, the commentators did not spend as much attention on the game between Caruana and Anand, which featured a classic IQP (isolated queen pawn). Without too much intrigue, their game remained balanced and was eventually drawn:
Tomorrow the players will play the rapid portion of the event, followed by the blitz on Monday. You can follow the games from the Champions Showdown starting at 1 p.m. CST each day.
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Bio
IM Kostya Kavutskiy is a professional chess author, journalist, coach, commentator, and player. As a part of Chess.com's content team since 2009, Kostya has recorded many video lectures, covered elite tournaments, written instructive articles & blogs, and has done many live commentary shows for Chess TV. Kostya has also written a number of articles for Chess Life magazine and Chess Life Online, and is currently an instructor for Chess University. In 2015, Modernized: The Open Sicilian was released, which Kostya co-authored with IM Zhanibek Amanov. Kostya's tournament accomplishments include winning the 2014 Southern California Closed Championship, as well as achieving his IM title in November 2016. In April 2017, he placed 6th in the star-studded 2017 Reykjavik Open. He currently resides in Mountain View, CA, and his plans are to pursue the GM title while working actively as a coach.
