In the fifth round of the Kings Tournament in Bucharest the series of draws came to an end. Veselin Topalov defeated Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu in a Queen's Indian to join Vassily Ivanchuk in the lead. The Ukrainian drew his game with Fabiano Caruana, a Najdorf English Attack, rather quickly.

Topalov beats Nisipeanu in round 5 | Photos provided by the organizers, more here

Even though this tournament unfortunately only has two games per day, the fifth round in Bucharest was again a very interesting one. And it finally brought the second decisive game!

Caruana and Ivanchuk got a sharp English Attack on the board and the Italian seemed to get a promising attacking position thanks to a positional exchange sacrifice, but Ivanchuk defended very accurately.

Visually it looked strong, but it is not clear if White can reach any advantage after that,

said Caruana.

PGN string

Topalov played a standard d4-d5 pawn sac against Nisipeanu's Queen's Indian and dominated the game from the start. The Romanian GM was under constant pressure and a powerful exchange sac by the Bulgarian combined with time trouble for the Romanian decided the game.

PGN string

Thus, before the last round two players are leading with 3 points out of 5: Ivanchuk and Topalov. In the last round they'll face each other to decide the winner of the tournament. Theoretically, if they make a draw and Caruana wins against Nisipeanu, the Italian GM can join the leaders. In case of a tie, the winner will be decided in a rapid match.

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Kings Tournament 2012 | Pairings & results

Kings Tournament 2012 | Round 5 standings