The leaderboard is considerably more tighter at the top than in recent years. After the 6th round we have a whooping 14 players leading with 5 points out of the 6 rounds. It is clear that to win the tournament, players need to start racking up wins!
Anish Giri is among the leaders. He has had a solid tournament starting with 4/4 but he has been held in his last two games. Anish has never been in any trouble so far in any of his games and looks in good form and must be considered the favourite. Here is his nice 4th round win against his countryman Jorden van Foreest.
Anish drew in the 5th round in a short game against Vidit Santosh Gujrati. Instead we got a treat when he visisted the commentary room for an extended period. Here is the masterclass by Anish Giri after round 5:
Vidit is also in the leading group and he has already played and drawn against both Giri and Jobava although he had to “spend” two white’s on those games.
He played a very nice game against GM Hjartarson which he annotated on the commentary show:
These are all likely to battle on the top. Baadur Jobava is always interesting. He had to concede an early draw but played a game true to his style against local GM Hannes Stefansson
Here are Jobava’s thoughts on the game:
The other top seeds, Andreikin and Almasi have had solid tournaments so far and are likely to challenge as are tournament regulars Gawain Jones and NIls Grandelius. Sergei Movsesian has also been in good form and has been dismantling with the Sicilian. Here is his game against GM Thorhallsson.
The surprise name in the leader group is of course Ramesh Babu Vaishali. This Indian youngster, sister of R.Praggnanandhaa and former winner of the girls U14 and U12 World champinshop. After losing to Abhijeet Gupta early she bounced back and managed to beat two GM’s in consecutive rounds against Eugenio Torre and Eugene Perelshteyn.
Lets have a look at a cool moment against Perelshteyn.
Here Vaishali was already doing well but had a nice finishing touch here with 40.Nxe5 netting another pawn which proved to be too much.
The “national guard” hasn’t been doing to well but GM Johann Hjartarson and IM Bjorn Thorfinnsson are still only half a point behind the leaders.
IM Bjorn Thorfinnsson of the Reykjavik Puffins is leading the way with 4,5 points heading the Icelandic players along with GM Hjartarson
One thing is clear, the battle will be very fierce in the coming days!
Enjoy some more excellent photo by Lennart Ootes and Maria Emelianova
Young Indian supertalents, Nishal Sarin and R.Praggnanandhaa sharing a moment 🙂
Some nice Northern Lights above Harpa
Winners of the Kids Blitz
Almasi doing quite well so far.
Hambleton is on course for a GM norm, can he finish the job?
Finally we had to steal this fantastic photo shot by Alina l’Ami. You cannot think of the color purple without seeing Tatev Abrahamian after seeing this one!
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Some social media stuff:
Round 6 photo gallery by Lennart Ootes:
Check out this video blog from the Chessbrah team at the halfway point, don’t worry the 2nd part will not be shot vertically 😉
IM Kostya Kavutskiy and CM Isaac Steincamp have been providing roundups of their games after each round, here is their latest one:
Live commentary show: www.twitch.tv/chess
