In round 5 of the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen maintained their half-point lead over the rest of the field. Hikaru Nakamura scored a quick win against David Navara while Boris Gelfand won with Black against Sergey Karjakin. The third winner in the A group was Vassily Ivanchuk, who won against Vugar Gshimov.

The first Thursday is traditionally the only day when no amateur event takes place in the playing hall

After the first rest day, when indeed some players played football, the tournament resumed with an exciting 5th round.

ECU President Silvio Danailov visited the tournament on Thursday - here he's standing next to one of the organizers, Dolf Vos

Hikaru Nakamura was the first to score a full point, which was in fact the first win for the American. Not for the first time in this tournament David Navara at some point completely collapsed.

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After the game we had a brief chat with Nakamura. First, we asked him whether this was indeed an easy win.

I wouldn't call it easy. David couldn't come up with the right setup for his pieces and pretty much from the early middlegame on I was just a little bit better and then he made a couple of serious mistakes. It was a relatively smooth win and certainly after the poor start I'm quite happy to win a game. For whatever reason up until my game against Anish I felt like I was playing badly and once I was able to draw that game very quickly I... I don't know how to explain it, I just had this very good feeling that I was just going to win my next game. Because of that I was very positive going into the game today, it felt very natural... I'm very happy with my game today overall.

We asked Hikaru to what extent he's thinking about last year's success, and whether it influences his play.

One big difference with last year is that this time I'm coming off with playing three very strong tournaments in a row and it's something I've never done before. I feel like overall, I've been swinging a little bit. In Moscow I played horribly, one of the worst tournaments I've ever played, then I played very well in London, Reggio I was playing well but then I just lost my head at the end...

What exactly happened?

I made two very big mistakes. The first one was that after my win against Vitiugov in the 6th game I started looking ahead instead of focusing on the tournament. My goal at that point was, I wanted to become Anand, I wanted to just draw all games very simply, get out of the tournament and get on to Wijk. That's a sensible plan to have but for whatever reason I made some poor opening choices where there was a lot of play and it was just very difficult. When you sort of switch your mindset from one tournament to another, it's very difficult. I sort of felt like the tournament was over. Instead of staying focused and trying to finish the tournament well I just completely shut down and I think that carried over here.

Until today.

Yes. One big advantage to winning last year, to even playing here several times now is that, one of the main things to remember is that it's a very long tournament and even if you get off to a bad start, if you sort of minimize the damage and you don't lose too many games at the start, you can always return to form before it's too late!

Boris Gelfand also won his first game, and it was a fine victory in a Najdorf with Black against Sergey Karjakin. It got him the 500 euro daily prize.

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Boris Gelfand, and other participants, arriving in the playing hall

We know where the Israeli grandmaster got his inspiration from, because afterwards he told us he had been watching Real Madrid-Barcelona on Wednesday night.

"Did you see it? It wasn't really a fight this time. Magnus [Carlsen, known to support Real - CV] agreed, Real wasn't putting up much resistance."

Fan of Barcelona Boris Gelfand

The third winner in the A group was Vassily Ivanchuk, who thus "recovered" from what was apparently a disappointing draw against Loek van Wely on Tuesday. Basically Vugar Gashimov was playing too optimistically, as he admitted himself after the game.

I played badly so I deserved to lose! Ne1 and g4 didn't work. I tried to play for a win but it was not a good idea.

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At the start of the round, most attention went to Carlsen-Giri. The reason, of course, was Giri's quick win exactly one year ago, which made the headlines and resulted in an appearance in a very popular talkshow on national television. This time the two young stars drew, after lots of complications.

The same result was seen in the other games and the quickest of those was Van Wely versus Aronian. It was clear from the start that they were both happy with this result. Van Wely:

Of course I was kind of hoping the guy would try some fancy business and then I could profit from his risky strategy but it seemed that he also was kind of content with a draw I think.

Aronian:

Giving yourself an extra rest day is never a mistake I think. I didn't feel like risking today.

For all groups Ivan Sokolov is awarding the daily prizes, but even if it hadn't been his good friend Jan Timman playing the game, Sokolov would surely have awarded the B group's 250 euro envelope to the white player for his fine victory over Sipke Ernst.

It was a strategical fight where White's Réti bishop got very strong from the start. Some nice, tactical nuances based on positional factors made it a very nice game.

The players analyzing afterwards

Timman showed this game with the famous demo board in the press room and yes, we filmed it! When he was ready, he said to his old friends Hans Ree and Hans Böhm: "Now I hope Ivan likes it too!"

Pentala Harikrishna is half a point ahead of Alexander Motylev, who beat Kateryna Lahno with Black in a Scandinavian with 3...Qd6. The Russian grandmaster, who is also helping Sergey Karjakin, had met the same variation earlier in the tournament with White against Sergey Tiviakov!

Maxim Turov also won his 5th game and so maintained his full point lead - Hans Tikkanen is the only player with 4/5. Pre-tournament favorite Matthew Sadler needs to hurry a bit if he still wants to fight for first place... 

Daily video by the organizers

Games group A, round 5

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Round 5 standings

Games group B, round 5

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Round 5 standings

Games group C, round 5

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Round 5 standings

The B group at the start of the round

Vladimir Potkin and Sergey Tiviakov chatting before the game

The post-mortem between Teimour Radjabov and Veselin Topalov