Superbet Chess Classic day 5

Let’s start with the four draws in Round 5, and take them in order of interest.

4. Deac 1/2-1/2 So

“First I’d like to apologise for a quick draw – no-one likes a quick draw!” said Wesley So, with the conviction of someone who’s converted to a new religion, or at least seen the pressure his colleague Teimour Radjabov was coming under. Wesley did something he last did in 2012 and played the Vienna, noting, “I already studied it, so I thought I might as well play it.”

He’d studied it for his game against Grischuk a couple of days earlier, but admitted it wasn’t the ideal choice to get winning chances against Bogdan-Daniel Deac. The 19-year-old local hero played the pawn sacrifice line with 6.Bxc4, which Jan Gustafsson calls, “the main threat to the Vienna’s very existence” in his chess24 Vienna video series. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t kill the Vienna, and in fact Jan had shown the whole line played out in Bucharest until it ended in a completely drawn rook endgame.

Then on Friday both events will be live at the same time, so that there’s definitely not going to be any lack of action! Tune in to the games live from 14:00 CEST here on chess24.

See also:

• Official website
• All the games with computer analysis on chess24
• Superbet Chess Classic Round 1: Giri’s gamble almost backfires
• Superbet Chess Classic Round 2: Deac shocks MVL
• Superbet Chess Classic Round 3: Lupulescu stuns Giri
• Superbet Chess Classic Round 4: So & Grischuk snatch lead