All games drawn in GRENKE Classic Round 5; Carlsen escapes with a draw - 5

Magnus Carlsen took a few too many risks against Georg Meier in round 5 of the GRENKE Classic and was pretty lucky to escape with a draw. Neither Meier nor Carlsen saw winning lines but suspected that black's position was bad. As it was by first time control the position was level and ended in a draw.

Arkadij Naiditsch built up a big, winning, advantage against Matthias Bluebaum but this advantage gradually disappeared in a messy game. Viswanathan Anand and Fabiano Caruana drew an interesting Caro-Kann. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian drew an interesting Ruy Lopez where MVL found a nice shot with 19.Nxe6, a move clearly missed by Aronian, but fortunately for black it wasn't winning and the game was drawn. Nikita Vitiugov was clearly better prepared than Hou Yifan in a theoretical Zaitsev Ruy Lopez but Hou's sensible play kept her out of trouble and the game was also drawn.

Round 5 standings: 1st-3rd MVL, Caruana, Vitiugov 3.5pts, 4th-5th Carlsen, Aronian 3pts 6th-7th Anand, Bluebaum 2pts 8th-10th Naiditsch, Hou,Yifan, Meier 1.5pts.

Round 6 pairings 2pm Friday: Carlsen-Aronian, Vitiugov-MVL, Caruana-Hou Yifan, Bluebaum-Anand, Meier-Naiditsch.