Standings before Round 4:
+1 Anand, Aronian, Karjakin
0 Caruana, Giri, Svidler
-1 Nakamura
-2 Topalov
Round 4 pairings and final results:
Nakamura 1/2-1/2 Giri (Semi-Slav, 29)
Svidler 1/2-1/2 Aronian (English, 41)
Karjakin 1-0 Anand (Reti, 43)
Caruana 1/2-1/2 Topalov (Guioco Piano, 52; Caruana may have failed to capitalize on a 37th move blunder)
Standings after 4 of 14 games:
+2 Karjakin
+1 Aronian
0 Anand, Caruana, Giri, Svidler
-1 Nakamura
-2 Topalov
Looks like Caruana is heading for a victory as Black against Aronian—if he doesn’t blunder yet again.
Caruana never had much against Aronian despite what the comps say.
In this kind of tournament, with almost everyone playing conservatively, he wasn’t going to take the risk by allowing 27…Qb6 28 Nf6+, for example.
That said, Moscow has been pretty boring so far.
I agree, he was too cautious. But, that’s the name of the game today.
It was Aronian who was on the cusp of winning: see the very entertaining postmortem.
Analysis, please. White’s attack is scary, and the extra black pawns are of no real value at this juncture of the game. Tell us where he was ‘too cautious?’ What would you have played instead?
The engines say that 23.f6 Bf8 24.h4!! was winning for Aronian. This was actually what his intuition told him was best, but at the board he couldn’t calculate it out, and didn’t trust his intuiton enough to just go with it anyway. 23.Bc1 allowed Caruana enough time to force a repetition. One guesses Caruana won’t try the Benoni again in this tournament.
Yes, Aronian had a scary attack - it is notable that ChessSpawn was claiming that Caruana, not Aronian, was ‘too cautious’ and that Caruana was winning unless he was going to blunder again. I guess that was just a materialistic view of the position (you know, each side has the same remaining pieces so let’s count the number of pawns to decide who is winning). One must always consider the source when it comes to chess position pronouncements.
Your obsession is showing again, Randy. 
Four draws yesterday.
Round 6 pairings and results:
Anand 1-0 Svidler (Closed Ruy 8.a4, 24)
Aronian 1-0 Nakamura (QID, 83; Naka forced to play losing move 74…Kf8 after touching his king)
Topalov 1/2-1/2 Giri (KID, 68)
Caruana 1/2-1/2 Karjakin (QID, 36)
Standings after Round 6 of 14:
+2 Aronian, Karjakin
+1 Anand
0 Caruana, Giri
-1 Svidler
-2 Nakamura, Topalov
Bad break for Nakamura who is certainly having his share of troubles. Let’s hope he can regroup and move up in the remaining rounds. IIRC, Caruana is still looking for his first win. He can certainly do it as he showed in Round 4 until move 41. I’d really like to see Caruana move up significantly. FWIW, the computer and bookmaker predicitions favored Caruana and Nakamura. Nice to see an old man like Anand playing well.
en.chessbase.com/post/computer-s … tes-winner
If you can find the round 5 postmortem on the horrible official website, it’s worth viewing. (Aronian and Caruana remind me of Bob and Ray.) In his Chess24 video, Gustaffson demonstrates the critical line at 15:30. in the post-mortem, Aronian demonstrated the amazing Qh2 without hesitation.
As for today, Aronian deserves a gift after a decade of bad luck in Candidates. But what a gift: I think many class players could draw this position against Aronian on a good day.
Anand’s win today is simply beautiful.
Found it: world’s greatest postmortem.
Apparently I know nothing about rook endings.
Can Black can defend on the e-file, then switch to attacking h5? (Aronian indicates that the White rook needs to start on d8 and the h-pawn needs to be pushed.)
[Event “?”]
[Site “?”]
[Date “???.??.??”]
[Round “?”]
[White “?”]
[Black “?”]
[Result “*”]
[SetUp “1”]
[FEN “3R4/5pk1/7p/4P2P/r4PK1/8/8/8 w - - 0 1”]
[PlyCount “24”]
The folks who complained about the way Nakamura castled last year are having a field day with his touch-move blunder today.
Did he touch the rook first?
On Facebook, Emil Sutovsky says you do.
https://www.facebook.com/emil.sutovsky/posts/10153720999669681
Interesting reading.
It’s probably good to be at least a little arrogant to win the Candidates. I prefer the quiet confidence of a Caruana or Anand. But if Ali was a 10 and Richard Sherman an 8, I think Aronian didn’t break 6 in this press conference. It threw me that he seemed to have convinced Kosteniuk.
Carlsen’s arrogance is accompanied by relentless self-criticism.
Your last sentence is an extremely important point. Fischer had that same ‘arrogance’ but was also generally brutally honest in his annotations/assessments of games and positions - including his own.