The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen went back into the lead alone after the seventh round of the Gashimov Memorial Carlsen secured his second win of the event against Hikaru Nakamura, their classical score now stands at 10 wins for Carlsen with 15 draws. Nakamura put a brave face on the loss from a position where the only discussion was about how he would go about winning. Nakamura's position gradually deteriorated in time trouble after he missed 28...Qh6. Carlsen was relieved the worst was over but with a big time advantage he found 37...Rdc8 when Nakamura's position was then close to collapse and by move 40 it had gone. 42...b3! was an opportunistic blow that would have speeded the end but Carlsen's 42...Rd2 just won the ending. This was again a 4.f3 Nimzo-Indian and I guess Carlsen will keep getting this played against him until he starts to be more convincing. His Benoni like setup was either bad or at the very least he didn't feel very at home with the problems.

The other games were less thrilling. Teimour Radjabov and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov didn't seem very interested in anything but a draw and played a drawish variation of the Catalan. Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana blasted out 28 moves of Giri-Caruana Gruenfeld from Zug 2013. Karjakin wanted another go at the unbalanced ending and although the game went on a bit it was almost like an adjournment session where both had researched this position in detail and there were no surprises.

Round 7 standings: Carlsen 4.5pts, Radjabov 4pts, Caruana, Karjakin 3.5pts. Nakamura 3pts, Mamedyarov 2.5pts

Round 8 Pairings: Mamedyarov-Nakamura, Carlsen-Karjakin, Caruana-Radjabov.