In the 4th round of the Univé tournament in Hoogeveen, The Netherlands Sergey Tivakov inflicted the second consecutive loss upon Hou Yifan. The Dutch grandmaster is now half a point behind Hikaru Nakamura, who drew his game with Anish Giri. In the open section GM Friso Nijboer grabbed the lead. He hayos 6/7, half a point more than IMs Riemersma and Willemze who drew quickly against each other.

Tiviakov beats Hou Yifan in round 4 | Photo courtesy of the official website

The venue is the Hoogeveen town hall

Starting the second half of the tournament with a full point lead was of course nice and comfortable for Nakamura. Although his closest rival in the leaderboard was Tiviakov, the American saw Giri as his biggest competitor. 

Anish is the one major threat here. Not to say that the other players aren't quite strong, but he is the most serious competition for me. I felt that as long as I don't do anything stupid against him I got a chance against the other players.

Giri, who arrived 20 minutes late at the board due to an issue with a train, got surprised by his opponent's opening choice. During his preparation he had spent time on the King's Indian, the Dutch and the Slav, but not on the Catalan. Nakamura:

I was on plus 2, I'm finally playing some good chess for a change so I just wanted to play something solid and not take too much risk. Everytime I tried to take risks recently I've done quite badly.

The playing hall during round 4

Giri decided not to follow the famous Anand-Topalov game from Sofia 2010, because he remembered a lot of subsequent games in which Black was doing alright. Instead, he went for an idea he already knew before Anand-Topalov: going with his knight to b5. He wasn't sure, however, in which position exactly the knight goes there.

After Nakamura's interesting 11...Na7 (in fact the novelty) White had a big choice. Giri felt that taking on a7 wasn't much for White, so he decided

just to play and hope he'll mess up.

Nakamura didn't mess up but instead continued energetically, sacrificing his b-pawn for active piece play. At move 25 Giri was thinking about offering a draw, but didn't ("because if he refuses I'm feeling a bit stupid"), and then Nakamura offered it.

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Giri and Nakamura, analyzing next to the amateurs

About his busy schedule, and his mixed results in the past few weeks, Nakamura said:

It feels like the last three weeks were some kind of nightmare, frankly. The most important thing is that I feel I'm playing well again, I'm excited to play chess. I'm not sure if playing four tournaments in a row was a good idea, but it was definitely a good learning experience.

Nakamura reading the latest New in Chess Magazine

After this round, in which he took his biggest hurdle, Nakamura will have to focus on the other Dutchman. Tiviakov defeated Hou Yifan to decrease the distance in the standings to half a point.

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Univé Tournament | Crown group | Round 4 standings

In the Open section Dutch GM Friso Nijboer (who retired a few months ago and has a day job now!) is in sole lead with 6/7. He beat Leonardo Valdes in the 7th round, while IMs Riemersma and Willemze quickly drew against each other. Two more draws were seen in Ernst-l'Ami (a tough fight) and Brynell-Timman (a more quiet affair). Again we provide a selection of games, from the last two rounds.

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Univé Tournament | Open group | Round 7 standings

Giri analyzing with his girlfriend IM Sopiko Guramishvili