The Week in Chess

Hikaru Nakamura beat Fabiano Caruana 2-0 in a blitz tie-break after their rapid match was drawn 2-2. Nakamura seemed in control of the match after going 2-1 up in the rapid section but after that he played quite shakily and the match could have gone either way. Nakamura will play in the final on Sunday against the winner of tomorrow's second semi-final between Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren.

In game one Caruana played the Italian game with white, as he did throughout the match. He didn't achieve much and the game was drawn in 42 moves. Games two was an Exchange Slav where Nakamura eventually gained quite a large advantage but with 41.Ra1 he went passive and lost much of this edge, he even got a bit lucky as his 51.Qxb5? overlooked the fork 51...Na3 losing the exchange but he still was left with enough counter play to force a draw.

In game three, another Italian game Caruana was not better when he tried to avoid a draw with 26.Qc2 most likely missing 26...Nh4 and after a couple of further inaccuracies in a difficult position he was lost. Caruana had to win game four and played the King's Indian - he was probably objectively worse but Nakamura said that the only way to prove this advantage was to blow black off the board, the kind of wild game he was trying to avoid. Nakamura played 33.a5 allowing 33...Nxe4 and after that was always worse and lost in 58 moves.

In the final stages there will be two sets of blitz matches before an Armageddon tie-break. The first game saw another Italian and Nakamura again got the advantage with black. He was highly critical of his 33...d4 which let a struggling Caruana back in the game. Caruana missed one very strong move for himself with 44.Qf3 - Nakamura should have played 45...g6 and even thought his 45...Qg6 should have lost to 46...Nf6+ followed by 47...Rh8+ (the evaluation of the resulting position is about equal) then Caruana simply overlooked one of the points of 46...Nf8 was to cover the h7 square, sacrificed his rook for a mate that wasn't there and had to resign. In the last blitz game Caruana got the advantage with black quite easily but his advantage dribbled away 28...Bf8? 29.g4 was winning for white, but Nakamura opted to keep control which he maintained for the rest of the game and even won after Caruana tried to win a drawn game at the end.

Semi-Final 2 Saturday 2nd May 2020 3pm BST

Carlsen-Ding

Final Sunday 3rd May 2020 3pm BST