The Week in Chess

The Fischer Random chess match between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura took place in Baerum, Norway 9th to 13th February 2018. This is a variant of chess where one of 960 starting positions is used rather than the standard one. Castling Kingside and Queenside is always possible but can lead to some very large leaps by the king. Four pairs of rapid games from the same starting position were played for four days, then on the final day there were four pairs of blitz games.

Magnus Carlsen won the match 14-10 with a 9-7 win in the rapid (double points over the blitz) and 5-3 win in the blitz. But for an extraordinary lapse at the end of the final game of the rapid where he had a draw by asking the margin would have been bigger. Carlsen hadn't got really good results in the few games in this format he'd played before but he was really impressive here,