The Week in Chess

The final match of the FIDE Chess.com Online Nations Cup was tied 2-2 with the title going to China as a result of them winning the preliminary stage. Although this was rather rough on a game USA side the Chinese domination of the first stage did deserve some reward.

It was fitting that the top two performers in the entire tournament also won their final games leaving Fabiano Caruana on a score of 7.5/9 and Yu Yangyi a score of 7.5/10.

The US strategy seemed to be to try and draw on boards 1, 3 and 4 and hope that Caruana win with white on board 2 against Wei Yi. Caruana won a pawn but things became very complicated and it was in the Rook and Knight endgame Caruana whistled up an attack that won the game. 30...Re2 (30...Rxa2 was better) seems to have been the decisive error.

This worked except So couldn't hold on against a savage attack from Yu Yangyi. So was under pressure throughout and then fell to the sacrifice 26.Ng5+.

On the other boards Hikaru Nakamura got a draw with black in an extremely sharp battle against Ding Liren. Although the computers give him a slight edge at the end a draw with black was a great result. Likewise Irina Krush played the Exchange French against Hou Yifan who out rated her by over 200 Elo point and she held the draw very comfortably.