Wesley So scrambled to first prize after a bizarre final round, Fabiano Caruana had a worrying meltdown before his world title match, Hikaru Nakamura beat So twice, and there was tension between America’s elite trio as the Leuven, Belgium, Grand Tour event finished last week.
This weekend the action moves to the banks of the Seine as the Paris section of rapid and blitz games continues until Sunday afternoon. As usual, you can watch free and live on the internet with computer and grandmaster commentary, starting at 1pm on Saturday and at 11am on Sunday and continuing for around five hours.
So dominated the Brussels rapid, which counted double Tour points, until losing his final two games. He still had a healthy three-point lead going into 18 rounds of blitz, but it shrank as Sergey Karjakin and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave edged closer. The stressful three seconds per move delay, rather than an increment, meant that long games had to be concluded at reaction speeds.
After the rapids, Nakamura claimed that So was far from the best at blitz, and this provoked some needle between the Americans. Caruana missed a chance to claim threefold repetition and lost to So, then complained of clock banging to the arbiters, who gave both So and Nakamura a warning during their game. Nakamura twice beat So, including in the final round when his compatriot’s lead was a bare half point.
That game also marked a remarkable Nakamura feat as he pulled off the same opening trap three times in one day. He earlier also defeated Anish Giri and Mamedyarov with the sequence 1 Nf3 Nf6 2 b3 g6 3 Bb2 Bg7 4 e3 0-0 5 d4 c5? 6 dxc5! Qa5+ 7 c3! Qxc5 8 Ba3 Qc7 9 Bxe7 and White has won a good pawn.
It was not only the Americans who were notably competitive. Just as Karjakin looked like catching the leader, he was demolished both by his fellow Russian Alexander Grischuk and by his friend Shak Mamedyarov. The final round results were bizarre as the four front runners all lost to leave So’s half point lead intact, and with it the $37,500 first prize.
The player who should be concerned is Caruana. The world title challenger had kept up his fine form from the Berlin candidates in the next tournaments at Karlsruhe and Stavanger, but he collapsed at Leuven, losing five at rapid and eight at blitz to finish next to last. Caruana’s disasters continued in the Paris rapids this week, which So again dominated but where the US No 1 was in last place with 1.5/6.
Meanwhile the world champion, Magnus Carlsen, who declined the Grand Tour, was enjoying himself as a television commentator on Spain v Portugal at the World Cup. Carlsen is a Real Madrid fan so could take simultaneous pleasure in Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick and Caruana’s discomfort in the speed games which will be used as a tie-breaker in London in November if the world title series reaches 6-6.
Some are already saying that Caruana, who has a heavy programme ahead with the St Louis rapid/blitz and the Sinquefield Cup in August plus top board for the US gold medal team at the 190-nation Olympiad in October, ought to withdraw from the Tour and concentrate on match preparation.
Below, Karjakin’s choice of 1 b3 is significant because the blitz specialist Maxim Dlugy recommended the opening in New in Chess magazine as ideal for speed games. Anish Giri erred with his pawn and rook swap on the a file, since the white queen at a1 becomes active on the dark squares, but the real blunder was 18…dxe4? when he should keep the diagonal closed by 18…d4!
Sergey Karjakin v Anish Giri, Leuven blitz 2018
1 b3 e5 2 Bb2 Nc6 3 e3 Nf6 4 Bb5 Bd6 5 Na3 e4 6 Nc4 Be7 7 Bxc6 bxc6 8 Ne2 a5 9 O-O a4 10 d3 exd3 11 cxd3 axb3?! 12 axb3 Rxa1 13 Qxa1 O-O 14 e4 c5 15 Ng3 d6 16 Ne3 g6 17 f4 d5 18 f5 dxe4? 19 dxe4 Qd3 20 Rf3 Qa6 21 Qc1 Bb7 22 Qc3 h5 23 Nd5 Bxd5 24 exd5 Qb6 25 Ne4 c4+ 26 Kf1 Kg7 27 d6 1-0
The Caro-Kann 1 e4 c6 is a solid defence, but definitely not a prelude to an early black pawn storm overwhelming the white king in 19 moves. Here’s how it happened in a current open:
Ludmila Tsifanskaya v Maxim Rodshtein, Teplice Open 2018
1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 Bf5 4 Nf3 e6 5 Be2 Ne7 6 O-O h6!? 7 b3 Nd7 8 Nbd2 g5 9 Ne1 c5 10 dxc5 Bg7 11 f4 gxf4 12 Ndf3 Ng6 13 Nd4? Be4 14 Nd3 Qg5 15 g3 Qe7 16 gxf4? Rg8 17 Nb5? Ngxe5! 18 Nd6+ Kd8 19 Be3 Bh8+ 0-1
3572 1 Rh2! If Kf3 2 Qf5+ Ke2 3 Qf1 mate. If Kd4 2 Qf5 a5 3 Rh4 mate. If Kd3 2 Qf5+ Kd4 3 Rh4 mate.