@vjap55 takes over the lead after day 2 of the Hivechess Candidates Tournament

Dear chessfans!

Yesterday rounds 5 to 8 of HCT were played, and we had the first missed and forfeited games. @samostically came late but could play still 2 out of 3 games (thanks to @jaki01 and @falcout who accepted to play outside of schedule, after the tournament) and @anomadsoul missed all his 4 games completely. Other than that all worked well.

Results

^{* indicates a missed game}

The cross-table:

I added to the table the no. of rounds played and the "balance" i.e. how much of your registration fee you will get back at the end of the tournament (will be added to the price).

Standings

After 8 rounds @vjap55 took the lead with 6,5 of 8 points. Closely following is a group of 3 players, all with 6 out of 7: @eniolw, @sawko and @samostically. If he would not have joined late (but won that game instead), @samostically could still be the sole leader with a perfect score of 7/7. @jaki01 fell back to the 5^th rank after having two losses yesterday.

Surprise of the day was @vjap55´s win against @eniolw, after he had defeated last time already @sawko! It was (after a solid Caro-Kann line) a queen end game with chances for both sides, but @eniolw had finally blundered his queen for free! It was a day of queen blunders, also @jaki01 blundered his queen out of nowhere in the game against @samostically.

In this position @eniolw with Black had a chance to win the game, after White had grabbed a pawn with Qxa7??. How best to protect b6 or is it not needed to protect that pawn? What would you do here?

Black to win

I saw too late, that @vjap55 had analyzed this position as well already in his analysis post, so if you want to give it a try and don´t succeed, you will find the solution there.

See you next Friday for the next 4 rounds and keep practicing!