Nakamura and Ponomariov got 6.5 points and had to play the blitz games to decide the winner.

In the Kutxa tournament, Jordi Magem was the winner after drawing his game and after Loek Van Wely also drew his game.

In the Euskal Xake Eskola tournament, Eric Prie won Alejandro Franco and Glenn Flear drew Iñigo Martin, which promoted Prie to the first place. In this tournament the local player Santiago González de la Torre gained his third International Master norm.

In the women Diputacion Foral de Gipuzkoa tournament, all games but one were draw, so the french Sophie Milliet won the tournament.

You can see and download the games fot he 9th round and the tie-break matches in our website.

Any thought that the second half of the San Sebastian “City of Culture” main event was going to be little more than a victory lap has been dispelled by former FIDE champion Ruslan Ponomariov. Super-mariov beat Vachier-Lagrave today to move to +3 just a half-point behind Nakamura. The American was pressed for an incremental eternity by Granda, who applied the famous Peruvian Slow-Roasted Chicken Attack by going all the way down to bare kings. This dropped Nakamura’s performance rating to a mere 2900. Karpov suffered yet another loss, his fifth, this time watching his Caro-Kann turn into a Caro-Kouldn’t against Vallejo. San Segundo took a pass against Svidler’s Grunfeld.

Movsesian-Kasimjanov looked like a great match-up on paper, with two of the sharpest players around going at it. But lately, perhaps on a pilgrimage to worship at the shrine of St. Arturo of Llusupovia, the Uzbekistani picked up the Petroff. He played it four times in the Nalchik Grand Prix and now twice in San Sebastian. And thus another Ruy Lopez and Sicilan player joins the ranks of the undead. Maybe Kramnik bit Kasim on the neck while he was seconding for Anand in Bonn last year. Even Movsesian’s attempt to liven things up with the nutty old Morozevich fave 5.Bd3 led to a draw in 24.

So with just two rounds to play Nakamura is finally feeling a little heat. He may have reason to second-guess his quick draw against Ponomariov yesterday if the Ukrainian’s surge continues. In the last two rounds Nakamura faces the two other sharpest players in the field, Movsesian and Kasimjanov — his Petroff notwithstanding since he has white against Nakamura in the final round. Ponomariov has an even tougher road to climb with the solid Svidler and Vallejo in his path. Svidler is still in with a chance a half-point back of Ponomariov, but would likely need some help to come from behind to win.

Granda showed again he’s no pushover by doing some pushing of his own against the leader. Nakamura showed he was happy to play for a win with black to seal the tournament by playing the Dutch against Granda’s 1.d4. (He also played it a couple of times last year, including a win against Karpov.) Things got wild quickly when White played the sideline 5.b4 and Nakamura responded with an even rarer “anyway” move 5..Nc6. They were already off the map by move 7, which would be quite unusual if Granda weren’t playing. The Peruvian part-time farmer has long been well-known for his self-taught and idiosyncratic play in every phase. But though he’s hardly as consistent as he used to be, don’t doubt his creativity or skills. Out of the insane opening he swapped down into a superior rook endgame. Eleven captures in a row (!) has a way of doing that. It became a R+5 vs R+4 with an extra rook pawn for White. This is usually not a big deal for the defender, but here Black had the extra weakness of doubled e-pawns. That gave Granda more than enough reason to play on, especially since he could do so at no risk to himself. The lack of a second or third time control is another factor, since it makes endgames into a pure torture test of nerves, thinking exactly 25 seconds per move for what seems like forever.

So it’s no surprise the endgame doesn’t seem to have been played perfectly by either player, though it will take more time than I have right now to find a big mistake or chance for a win if any exist. That doesn’t seem to be the case after a quick run-through, however. According to a report from the scene, Nakamura let his frustration with Granda show on his face a few times as the position simplified into a relatively obvious draw. Such displays were once an established part of young Nakamura’s repertoire and I’m sure I’m not the only fan who hopes they go the way of his Qh5 now that he’s a two-time US champion and the top-rated American. Admittedly, Kasparov was also known for occasionally pulling derisive faces at the board (apart from his generally open-book emotions), but it was one of the few ways in which the 13th world champion should not be imitated at the board! Plus, the more the top guys know it bugs you the more likely they are to push your buttons. Anyway, since we’re not going to the videotape, as they say, and the game ended in a tidy draw, it’s hardly worth a paragraph. But hey, the way Naka has been rocking the boards we have to have something to complain about, right?

More on the other games later, a bit pressed for time these days.

Update: Okay, had a little time to poke around on the games. Van Wely has played 5.b4 in Granda-Nakamura quite a few times, it seems, but few have played Nakamura’s provocative 5..Nc6. Fun stuff. Who says chess openings are played out. You don’t need shuffle chess, just shuffle in some players willing to be creative and think on their feet. I wonder how White solves his problems after 9..a6!? and ..d5 is going to come harder than in the game. As for the endgame, I don’t have my books handy and computers are typically horrible in these positions. The inability of the stronger side to make progress and the inevitable repetition are such a long way away, what they call the horizon effect. If the comp can wander around with an extra passer on the 7th for 30 moves without repeating, it’s still +2.48 or whatever. But that doesn’t mean it will ever win. Just keep playing out the computer’s main line and it will often eventually flatline at 0.00 without making progress.

But it seems there are definitely a few tricks in the position. At the risk of blowing your mind, and/or making an idiot of myself, I think 40.h4 was a blunder that cost White a forced win! The short version is that with the pawn back on h2 instead of h4, the white king can go to c6 and then Rc8 with ..Rxa7 Rc7+ and the pawn endgame is winning (or the king to d8 and the rook to c8 with the same plan of ..Rxe7 Rc7+). Even with the white king seeming far away on c7, the pawn on h2 is too far away from the black king and the white king scoops up the black d-pawn, winning. Fantastic! The black rook can’t check on c1 because Kd5 then wins the e4 pawn when the rook has to get back to the a-file. And the black king can never come up to shield off or cover the e-pawn because eventually the black rook runs out of checks and the white rook will step out of in front of the a-pawn with check. I love rook endgames, really I do. I get the feeling that if I leave the beast running overnight it will announce mate in 40 or something after 40.Kf4. Let us know if you find a confirmation or refutation. But with the pawn on h4 the drawing routine is fairly straightforward from what I can tell, since the rook swap is now just a draw. So I have a little more sympathy with Nakamura’s frustration at that point. And Granda was clearly just hoping for a blunder by the time the a-pawn came off. Or maybe he was just enjoying having an extra pawn and a better position even if was a purely symbolic one.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. For the fourth time in five days, Hikaru Nakamura emerged victorious in San Sebastian. And now he’s doing it with both colors. He outplayed San Segundo in a sharp line of the Cambridge Springs QGD with 9..e5, an offbeat move that didn’t catch on after Smyslov lost with it against Kasparov in their 1984 candidates match. That moved the American to a spectacular 4.5/5 and a full-point lead with four rounds to play. Top seed Svidler moved up in the standings to +2 with his second straight win, adding to Karpov’s woes.

Always a “show me” player, Nakamura grabbed a pawn on a3 instead of Smyslov’s retreat with 10..Bd6. White gets space, the bishop pair, and some initiative for the pawn, but 14.cxd4 looks a little funky. It gave Black two connected passers instead of just the passed a-pawn. Black kept improving, though it looked like it was going to be a very long slog to mobilize the pawns when San Segundo made things very hard for himself by letting the queens come off. He achieved an opposite-colored bishops position but with knights still on the board no blockade would work. 32..Rc4! is the sort of petite tactic that typifies Nakamura’s games. The unexpected stabs and jabs keep coming in the service of an overall strengthening of the position.

San Segundo hung tough and put up enough resistance to give himself drawing chances thanks to those mismatched bishops and some inaccuracies by Nakamura. After 47.Nb6 it’s not clear how Black is going to make progress. The white d-pawn is dangerous and the a-pawn is locked down. But once again Nakamura handled the complications better than his opponent and two weak moves were enough to return White to the critical list. Allowing a fork to remove his bishop removed many of the drawing possibilities. 51.Nf5 Be4 52.Ne3 was still a fight, it seems. Black allowed no second chances and finished cleanly.

An incredible run, but the tournament’s not quite over yet. Nakamura has white tomorrow against one of his two closest pursuers, Ponomariov. He’s already faced the other, Svidler, both on +2. Nobody else is even in the picture for the top spot, which is rather unusual. Svidler made beating the Petroff look easy today with the nice Nimzowitschian clearance sac 15.e6! Karpov defended quite well at first and a computer probably would have been happy with the black position even after the ominous 19.g5. But the veteran just can’t handle these sharp positions these days and he went downhill fast. The wheels completely came off the Karpov ZIL with 30..c6? and 31..g4?, though it was probably already over. As fun as it is watching Nakamura’s star shine so brightly in Donostia this past week, it’s pretty painful seeing Karpov ripped up so badly. I knew it was going to be bad, but not this bad. Let’s hope for a consolation win for him in the final four rounds.

Did Vallejo really play 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 a6 3.g4?!? against Vachier-Lagrave as the official site and score say? This comes a few days after I received the latest NIC Yearbook and its article on “White playing g4 against just about everything.” But this? I would believe it was a typo and that he played the usual 3.g3 except for one thing. On move 24 (until then there as no real difference) Black could have played the strong 24..f5 if the pawn had been on g3 instead of g4. (Also ..f5 on move 25.) Wild. Granda-Movsesian was a congested King’s Indian with a nominal advantage for White he couldn’t exploit. Ponomariov was pushed back in his Catalan by Kasimjanov in an interesting game that ended too soon.

Round 6: Nakamura-Ponomariov, Svidler-Vallejo, Vachier-Lagrave-San Segundo, Kasimjanov-Granda, Karpov-Movsesian.

If Nakamura wins again just invoke the softball slaughter rule and hand him the trophy. Not to get ahead of things, but even if he doesn’t win another game Nakamura could start the event barely in the top 30 on the rating list and finish it tantalizingly close to the top dozen.