With 8 of the top 10 players participating (only Kramnik and So are missing), a very high level chess tournament is going on in Norway. And interestingly, in a field of 10 players, half of the players were at 2800+ ratings at some point in the tournament. Only today Caruana lost 5 points to fall to 2799.6, leaving 4 players in the 2800 club. I'm not sure if we ever had four to five 2800+ players simultaneously in the chess ratings and playing the same tournament.
Carlsen had his worst tournament start ever by losing 3 games in first 4 rounds and drawing one. Finally he scored a victory today in the 5th round today. Anand has 1 victory (over Carlsen) and 4 draws. No one had been able to put any pressure on Anand so far in this tournament. And out of 4 draws, he had a upper hand in three of the games. Its surprising and little disappointing that he did not have more victories to show so far.
The real lucky player is Topalov who already has 4 victories and one draw in the five rounds so far. The lucky Topalov was involved in the dramatic start of the tournament when from the lost position he got a very unusual gift from the world champion Carlsen as Carlsen ran out of time at move 60. Carlsen had no idea that there was no additional time given after they reach 2nd time control at move 60, except 30sec increment. Well, he had no one else but himself to blame as he turned in late on the first day and missed the announcement on time control. Topalov was again lucky today as he got a gift when in a totally draw end game, the opponent Jon Ludvig blundered on move 74th and had to straight away resign. But he did play some good chess in other two victories.
Anand is playing a very confident chess in this tournament. He has sorted out Nakamura who used to have an edge over Anand for a while, but not anymore. Today, Anand playing with black against Nakamura, defended solidly. In fact for a while Caruana also had had upper hand against Anand, but this time Caruana was happy to salvage half point against Anand in the first round. In second round, Anand with black managed to get advantage over Giri but could not bring back full point. In the 3rd round, Grischuk managed to hold Anand who looked like winning in the middle game. Finally Anand tasted victory with white over Carlsen in the 4th round.
The current standings:
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1 Topalov, Veselin 4½ 2798
2 Nakamura, Hikaru 3½ 2802
3 Giri, Anish 3 2773
4 Anand, Viswanathan 3 2804
5 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime 2½ 2723
6 Aronian, Levon 2 2780
7 Grischuk, Alexander 2 2781
8 Caruana, Fabiano 2 2805
9 Carlsen, Magnus 1½ 2876
10 Hammer, Jon Ludvig 1 2677