Vasily Ivanchuk grabs lead on 41st birthday

Vasily Ivanchuk grabs lead on 41st birthday

In Round 5 of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament, Vasily Ivanchuk, who celebrated his 41st birthday today, grabbed the sole lead in the overall standings with a 1½-½ win over Jan Smeets. Magnus Carlsen saw a winning streak of seven consecutive wins interrupted by Sergey Karjakin. The Norwegian top-seed is now in second place together with Boris Gelfand, who defeated Leinier Dominguez 2-0 (scoring his fourth consecutive win in the process).

Yesterday the participants of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament enjoyed a free day. Some of them stayed at the hotel to recharge their batteries, others joined an excursion to Gourdon, an age-old mountain village perched on a rock 780 meters above sea-level with a splendid view of the surrounding natural scenery and of Nice at a distance of some 10 kilometres (the ride there was obviously longer and lasted about an hour). The excursion included a visit to the local museum and a relaxed lunch on the outside terrace of Le Nid d’Aigle. At the end of the afternoon the players who took part in the excursion returned to the Palais de la Méditerranée, where in the evening they were joined by their colleagues at a Quiz evening. The theme of the evening was Movies (with questions about chess interspersed) and we can reveal that Ruslan Ponomariov, who was on the winning team, astounded all and sundry with his passionate rendition of We Are the Champions. And then today, at 14.30 it was back to chess again with the games of the fifth round.

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