The Week in Chess

Hikaru Nakamura won the only decisive game of the day when he beat Teimour Radjabov in 75 moves and six and a half hours play of Round 2 of the FIDE Candidates tournament in Madrid.

Nakamura didn't get much out of the opening and the game turned into a very long grind. It seems about move 35 Radjabov started to get into trouble but the whole endgame was very hard to understand for anyone. Nakamura returns to 50% after his loss against Caruana yesterday. This endgame was far too difficult for me to annotate well.

The leaders Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana drew a very complicated Giuoco Piano by repetition in 41 moves. Caruana was well prepared and played bold pawn pushes on the kind side. Caruana sensed he was better at the end, and he was, but it wasn't easy to see why so he took the draw.

This was Alireza Firouzja's 19th birthday and it looked for a while like he was heading for a loss against Richard Rapport but went on to escape in a tricky double rook endgame the computers insisted was winning for a long time. Firouzja drew the short straw and was the player who got two games with the black pieces at the start of the event. Having struggled but in the end survived he will hope to start using the initiative with white starting in Round 3.

Jan-Krzysztof Duda drew against Ding Liren in another complex Giuoco Piano. Ding seemed to be doing well at one point but after a few inaccuracies both players decided the position was about equal and repeated.

Round 2 standings: 1st Caruana 1.5pts, 2nd Nepomniachtchi 1.5pts, 3rd Rapport 1pt, 4th Duda 1pt, 4th Firouzja 1pt, 6th Nakamura 1pt, 7th Ding Liren 0.5pts, 7th Radjabov 0.5pts,

Round 3 pairings Sunday 19th June 2pm BST: Ding-Rapport, Caruana-Duda, Radjabov-Nepomniachtchi, Firouzja-Nakamura