The Week in Chess

Daniil Dubov won the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge after a dramatic final day of action. Dubov wins $45,000 and place in the final four starting on August 9th. Nakamura won $25,000 and will be back alongside Dubov, Carlsen and Ding Liren in two weeks for the Online Chess Masters. After a slow start on the first day Dubov impressed throughout winning some key games, including against Carlsen to even get to the final knockout phase.

The final day was fittingly dramatic with changes of fortune throughout. Dubov summed things up as "Today was not our typical match. Normally he plays better and I'm better prepared, but today was the opposite" and added that "Throughout the match I had the feeling that he's absolutely sure he'll win the Armageddon with Black". In particular he thought that Nakamura ought to have played on at the end of game one and that he should have pushed for a win in game four.

The first game was a very sharp English where both players tried to recall their preparation, Dubov believed afterwards he should have played 18.e4 and he was worse for the rest of the game. Game two saw Nakamura get a very significant advantage out of the opening which he continued to push but starting with 25.Rd2?! (25.Rc4) Nakamura started to go wrong and after 34.Re4 he was completely lost and resigned on move 44. Nakamura looked very shocked at his loss but came back straight away with his most impressive game of the day winning with black in a different sharp English variation. Nakamura got a very good position out of the opening but later he allowed Dubov some chances of his own and perhaps this helped him win as Dubov switched to trying to win around move 27 and this backfired 32.Nd3 seems to have been particularly unfortunate. Game four was a reasonably quiet draw with Dubov crediting his second Alexander Riazantsev with coming up with 12...c5 between games.

Nakamura had the choice of colours in the Armageddon tie-break and as usual chose black, Dubov hit a bulls eye with his opening choice of the Glek Vienna variation with Nakamura going completely off the rails in the sequence 9...d5 (probably already wrong) 10.exd5 Nxd5 11.f4! exf4? (definitely wrong 11...Nxc3) 12.Bxd5 Bxd5? (losing 12...fxe3+ was better for still better for white but a mess). After this Dubov had cleaner wins but brought home the point easily enough. This Dubov vs Nakamura rivalry will surely be keenly felt for the remains of the series.

Remaining tour events:

Online Chess Masters 2020 Sat 20th June - Sun 5th July 2020

Legends of Chess - Tue 21st Jul - Wed 5th Aug 2020.

Magnus Carlsen Tour Final 2020 Sun 9th Aug 2020 Thu 20th Aug 2020