After five games of the 14-round Candidates Chess Tournament, the 25-year-old Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin had accumulated a total of 3½ points (a win = 1 point, a draw = ½ point; a loss = 0). He was followed by Armenia’s Levon Aronian on three points.
Karjakin was the only player to score two wins thus far against Vishy Anand and Hikaru Nakumura, in addition to three draws. Third place contestant Anish Giri from the Netherlands had been unsuccessful in winning a game. His games all ended in draws just as Danish grandmaster and current world champion trainer Peter Heine Nielsen predicted.
Although the tournament still has a long way to go—to the end of next week—one of the bookmakers’ fancies, Nakamura, disappointed many with his loss to Karjakin. However, Nakamura held on to draws for the remainder of his other four games. Nevertheless, he held the insignificant position of being placed close to the rear of the field ahead of Veselin Topalov, who was absolutely at the rear of the eight contestants. The US’s Fabiano Caruana and Russia’s Peter Svidler played to draws