Standings after 6 rounds
| 1-2. | Carlsen, Magnus | g | NOR | 2815 | 4 |
| 1-2. | Karjakin, Sergey | g | RUS | 2776 | 4 |
| 3. | Nakamura, Hikaru | g | USA | 2774 | 3 |
| 4-5. | Radjabov, Teimour | g | AZE | 2744 | 2½ |
| 4-5. | Ivanchuk, Vassily | g | UKR | 2776 | 2½ |
| 6. | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | g | ROU | 2659 | 2 |
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Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Nakamura could have destroyed Carlsen. He was just being nice to him.
Yeah, right. Do you really think Naka — who obviously wanted to avenge his loss with the black pieces — would’ve gone for a three move repetition if he felt that he was better?
Magnus was slightly better and that’s why Naka realized that a draw wouldn’t be so bad after all. If Naka had desperately gone for a win, it could easily backfire against a strong player like Magnus. Naka has played several attacking games (classical time controls) against Magnus and lost (the most recent one being his first round loss in this tournament). This offensive strategy might work fine against weaker players, but it hasn’t worked at all against Magnus.
Actually, Nakamura was lucky that Magnus was tired that day, otherwise Magnus would’ve continued the game, and a loss for Nakamura wouldn’t seem unlikely.
Magnus writes in his blog:
“What’s happened in 6 days? Same opponent as in round 1, but today I just wanted to finish the game. I didn’t sleep well and was happy to force a repetition of moves around move 30. Nakamura was visibly unhappy but realistic enough to take the draw instead of playing on in a slightly worse position. He didn’t get much of an advantage from the opening. His d5 closing the pawn structure in the Ruy Lopez resulted in a positional game with only a tiny edge for white initially. When he traded rooks in the a-file black, if any, is probably slightly better. On a normal day I would have continued, but today the early draw suited me just fine.”