The Week in Chess

Ian Nepomniachtchi leads the Candidates on 3/4 after beating Alireza Firouzja. The remaining round 4 games were drawn. Fabiano Caruana is half a point behind the leader.

Firouzja has struggled to get into the tournament due to the really quite terrible draw he's got, starting with two blacks and now today black again for the third black in four games. Of course the games with the white pieces will come eventually but this is as trying a start as it's possible to have. Today was a razor sharp Najdorf where Firouzja tried to surprise Nepomniachtchi with the uncommon but also not highly regarded 15...Bc4. We won't really know if Nepomniachtchi knew any detailed lines but although clearly thinking he played his moves reasonably quickly and the position went from no fun for Firouzja to lost with no possibility of any fight back in very short order. Most likely 20...Bxf1 isn't that good (maybe 20...Kh8 is slightly better), 21...a3 also may well not be the best and 23...Nd6? (23...Qc7 looks uncomfortable but it has the merit of not losing immediately) pretty much ends the game, there's just nothing for black, no real attack anymore while white is going to get to black's king when he's good and ready. If one subscribes to the theory that Nepomniachtchi is at his best when things are going well then the other players have plenty to worry about.

The other games were not very interesting. Ding Liren won a pawn against Fabiano Caruana but it just wasn't enough to even put on very much pressure. Ding played on and on as he should but Caruana held easily. Hikaru Nakamura knows his Berlin Ruy Lopez structures extremely well and Richard Rapport didn't get a sniff of a chance. Jan-Krzysztof Duda also could set any problems against Teimour Radjabov's Berlin Defence and the game was drawn in 41 moves.

Round 4 standings: 1 Nepomniachtchi 3pts, 2 Caruana 2.5pts, 3 Duda 2pts, 4 Rapport 2pts, 5 Nakamura 2pts, 6 Ding Liren 1.5pts, 6 Radjabov 1.5pts, 8 Firouzja 1.5pts,

Round 5 pairings 22nd June 2022 2pm BST: Caruana-Rapport, Radjabov-Ding, Firouzja-Duda and Nakamura-Nepomniachtchi