Round 6 of Norway Chess 2015 is roaring along with the eyes of chess fans looking in two directions: 1) at Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura’s game to see if Carlsen can squeeze out another win, and 2) at Veselin Topalov’s commanding 5.5/6 lead. Round 6 earned Topalov another win against Alexander Grischuk. Grischuk’s recent performances have brought him below the 2800 ELO mark to 2781 and another loss in this tournament (1 of 3) did not help his cause.
On the Carlsen front, the World Champion played a somewhat interesting game against Nakamura in which the position looked won at several times, but the competition eventually gave way to a draw. Nakamura is a master of tactical positions and that expertise shined through in holding off to get the draw against Carlsen. The 95 move game between the World Champion and his potential challenger was exhausting to watch, so I can only imagine how exhausting it was to play. In fact, I was able to run some errands, take a nap, and spend some time with the kiddos before the draw was made on move 95. Here’s the full game:
Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, and Jon Ludwig Hammer have almost completely disappeared from headlines and online tournament reports as each of them sit with Carlsen near the bottom of the cross table. Only time will tell if any of them can stage a comeback in the second half of the tournament and earn one of the top-three spots. Check out all of the games here: