For the second time, it's Levon Aronian who is the sole leader at the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. On Friday the Armenian grandmaster defeated Vugar Gashimov, while Magnus Carlsen had to be satisfied with a draw against David Navara. The other decisive results were Giri-Kamsky 1-0, Gelfand-Nakamura 0-1 and Radjabov-Karjakin 1-0.

Levon Aronian making his first move in round 6

It's a rare thing, to see a game between two of the world's best players finish in less than three hours and... the result not being a draw. This is what happened in Aronian vs Gashimov. Every now and then the Azerbaijani tries the slightly risky Benoni, and usually with good results. This time things went wrong at an early stage. Well, timewise, because half of the moves came on the board very quickly.

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The winner of the game, and the 500-euro Piet Zwart Prize, said:

Actually I didn't really expect this line, I mean it's a very rare line and very risky. Maybe I wasn't playing precisely, but I was trying to play safe.

Well, this was enough apparently to score the full point. According to Aronian this

...can only be explained by my opponent's bad form.

And so in order to keep the pace, Magnus Carlsen needed to win with Black against David Navara, who hadn't made a very good impression so far. However, in no time a dead drawn position was reached in this game. The Norwegian played on for another few hours, because he felt the position had the "potential to be slightly better" for him.

I thought I wasn't going to be doing very much in the hotel anyway, so why not sit there for a while.

Magnus did have some advantage, according to Navara.

At least the advantage of the stronger player.

After this round Carlsen is sharing second place with Teimour Radjabov, who inflicted the third loss upon Sergey Karjakin. He felt it was a deserved win.

I kept pressing. I was slightly better all the time but to make it a point is hard.

The finish was pretty:

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Just when he seemed to be doing quite well in the tournament, Boris Gelfand blundered terribly against Hikaru Nakamura. Although it still might have been a draw at the end, according to the Israeli grandmaster he played the whole game "horribly".

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Anish Giri won his second game of the tournament, against Gata Kamsky. At first the Dutchman was winning, then he spoilt it but in the ending that resulted, according to Giri his opponent

misplayed it completely; allowed me too much.

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After his fine game on Thursday, Jan Timman was defeated by tournament leader Pentala Harikrishna. The Indian grandmaster, who won the daily prize for this game, is a point ahead of Alexander Motylev.

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In the C group Maxim Turov dropped his first half point, against the runner-up in the standings, Hans Tikkanen. A very entertaining draw was played between Matthew Sadler and Etienne Goudriaan.

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Daily video by the organizers

Games group A, round 6

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Round 6 standings

Games group B, round 6

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Round 6 standings

Games group C, round 6

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Round 6 standings