The Week in Chess

Ian Nepomniachtchi had an extremely lucky escape against Hikaru Nakamura in Round 5 of the FIDE Candidates tournament in Madrid. His draw means that he still leads the event alone on 3.5/5 half a point clear of Fabiano Caruana.

Nakamura played a very popular line against Nepomniachtchi's Petroff Defence and they followed an old game of the American's until 14...Bf8 deviated. The first real key moments were 16...Qe4? a mistake played after a remarkable 14 seconds of thought, 17.Bf1 Qg4? (after 1 minute 23 seconds of thought, 17...Qb1 is better). After the game Nepomniachtchi explained that he'd confused this position with a similar one where these moves work. Essentially now Nepomniachtchi had wrecked his position and there was nothing to be done but hope that Nakamura messed up, and mess it up he did even though it took quite a few inferior moves to do it. 23.Re3 is not a bad move but the computers think 23.Nh4 is better, 25.Nd2? was the move Nakamura pointed to as the real culprit ("I Am Disgusted" is the title of his channel's video on the game) but even then it took one more 28.Na5? for equality to be restored. In the last Candidates which he won Nepomniachtchi played two very poor games and lost them both alongside a generally very powerful performance. It's the downside of his sometimes intuitive style, if he doesn't even lose his bad games it's very good news for his prospects in this tournament.

The other games were also drawn. Caruana was the one who had to be careful in a very sharp Sicilian Taimanov that finished in a draw by repetition. Ding Liren managed to get a winning position with black but blundered on move 40 to allow Teimour Radjabov to escape. Alireza Firouzja and Jan-Krzysztof Duda drew a sharp and difficult Petroff Defence that blew itself out by move 26 after which they traded to sterile equality.

Round 5 Standings: 1st Nepomniachtchi 3.5pts, 2nd Caruana 3pts, 3rd Nakamura 2.5pts, 4th Rapport 2.5pts, 5th Duda 2.5pts, 6th Ding Liren 2pts, 6th Radjabov 2pts, 8th Firouzja 2pts.

Round 6 Thursday 23rd June 2pm BST: Radjabov-Rapport, Firouzja-Caruana, Nakamura-Ding Liren, Nepomniachtchi-Duda.