By Armstrong Vas
Doha: Reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway played a brilliant attacking game against Li Chao of China to emerge as the sole leader at the Qatar Masters Open Chess Championship here yesterday.
In the fifth round of the nine-round championship, the 25-year-old Norwegian registered his fourth successive win.
Carlsen, who began his campaign with an opening round draw with Nino Batsiashvili of Georgia, now has 4.5 points from five rounds. Eight players are in second spot, with four points, including last year’s winner Yu Yangyi of China.
Overnight joint leader Anish Giri of Netherlands is one of them along with Wesley So of USA, Dariusz Swiercz of Poland, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan, Surya Shekhar Ganguly of India, Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine.
Qatar’s Mohammed Al Sayed Mohammed is in the 17th place.
The Qatar Masters Open is the strongest ever of its kind with 77 Grandmasters’ taking part. And it is for the first time that a reigning world champion is competing in an open event since Boris Spassky did in Vancouver in 1971.
At last year’s championship, Giri and Kramnik won second and third place respectively.
The Championship is organised by the Qatar Chess Federation in association with Qatar Olympic Committee and sponsored by Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros Co WLL with a total prize money of $130,000. The prize for the top 20 players of the Qatar Masters Open is more than $100,000, with the winner taking home $27,000.
The competition will be fierce in the next three rounds which resume after today’s rest day.
The championship ends on December 29.
The Peninsula
