Tension rising: Carlsen after drawn 5th game
KOLKATA: Game 5 of the world chess championship too ended in a draw, leaving champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi tied on 2.5 points each in this 14-round contest. Wednesday’s stalemate came in 43 moves. “Obviously, the tension is rising and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it’s going to be hard for either of us to break through,” said Carlsen after the truce in Dubai. “But I do get a rest day now and a chance to prepare for two white games in the next bunch of games. That’s good but it’s not easy.”
Playing white, Nepomniachtchi employed the Ruy Lopez opening and breezed through his moves unlike Carlsen. The reigning champion pondered 20 minutes on the 19th move before playing Qe8. “There were some different things to consider,” Carlsen said. “Mainly I was choosing between Qe8 and Re8, since I thought I needed to get
Be6. But at the end of the day I couldn’t find a way to refute Qe8, so I went for that.” Instead of the expected c4 in his 20th Nepomniachtchi played Red1. “Of course I considered c4 as one of my options. The position was so pleasant it was hard to choose the type of advantage I wanted to see on the board,” said the Russian challenger. Carlsen said he was relieved at white not opting for c4.
“Today is basically not about him defending well but me not using all the opportunities I had” Nepomniachtchi said. “In general I believe these games are pretty much tense and despite it’s all draws, we are trying to play reasonable chess.” Wednesday’s result means the last 17 games in the world championship have been draws. Carlsen had drawn the last two games against Sergey Karjakin in 2016 and all 12 games against Fabiano Caruana were draws needing a tie-breaker to decide the winner in 2018. If all games end in draws, the tie-breaker will be played on December 16.