In combined fifth spot after five draws, World Champion Viswanathan Anand will take on Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine in the sixth round of the Tal Memorial International chess competition.
With the next World Championship match next to Boris Gelfand on his mind, Anand has not been at his best. But, regardless of his mediocre result, the Indian ace is just half a point following the leading group.
Except in the game next to Levon Aronian of Armenia, Anand has not had hard positions to compete and while there have not been very sharp or difficult battles; he has been investment his fort with complete ease.
After the black game next to Ivanchuk, Anand will have two back-to-back white games next to World No. 1 Magnus Casrlsen of Norway and Garry Kasparov's latest protege Hikaru Nakamura of United States.
In these two games, the World Champion can make the fortune swing towards him.
The lead past the half-way in this ten-player round robin event, is joint by Carlsen, Aronian and Russian duo of former European Champion Ian Nepomniachtchi and Sergey Karjakin, who all have three points each from five games.
Anand shares the next spot beside with Ivanchuk and World Cup winner Peter Svidler of Russia on two and a half points, while Russian Vladimir Kramnik and Nakamura are closed behind with two points apiece.
Anand's challenger in the next world championship - Boris Gelfand of Israel - is at present languish at the bottom with three draw and two losses with four rounds still to come.
The Indian lost to Ivanchuk 0.5-1.5 in the two-game mini-match of the Bilbao Final Masters newly and he will be looking forward to avenge that.
Ivanchuk has had some mixed results here with one victory, one loss and three draws so far.
Magnus Carlsen is the one everybody fears in chomp games and he has come up with some inspirational games. The Norwegian is trying to create something of his own in most of the games here and his efforts are creditable simply because none - as yet - has been able to hollow his confidence.
Nepomniachtchi benefit from a mistake by Kramnik in the first round and has been reap dividend of that to be on the leader board.
Karjakin, like Carlsen, has scored over Gelfand to be at the top so far and the next round will be critical for him as well when he takes on Nepomniachtchi with black pieces.
Pairings round 6: Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr, 2.5) vs vs Anand (Ind, 2.5); Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 3) vs Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 3); Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 3) vs Peter Svsidler (Rus, 3); vsladimir Kramnik (Rus, 2) vs Hikaru Nakamura (Usa, 2); Levson Aronian (Arm, 3) vs Boris Gelfand (Isr, 1.5).