The Week in Chess

Hikaru Nakamura looked very comfortable in progressing to the semi-finals of the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge by defeating Levon Aronian 2-0 in their mini-matches. Nakamura will now have three days off to prepare for the winner of Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So. In the other match Ding Liren levelled his tie against Yu Yangyi winning 2.5-1.5.

Aronian was defeated an the Armageddon tie-break after a 2-2 tie in their first mini-match and would have been anxious to avoid that option today. In game one Aronian was very comfortable out of the opening with black but he got into major trouble in the following sequence 27.c4 Nc7?! (27...bxc4) 28.Kg2 (28.Bf2 was better) 28....Ne6?! (28....b4=) 29.Bf2 Qe7? (it's already tricky but this is definitely bad) and Nakamura ended up winning. In game two Nakamura's defence to the Bf4 Queen's Gambit we all know so well from these online events held up again for a draw (he was actually better). In game three Nakamura seemed content to draw with white and in the final game Aronian finally got the kind of position he wanted until Nakamura tore the initiative from him with 17...f5. The computers think is very bad but at this time control Aronian couldn't find his way through and after 21.Qc1? Nakamura was already better (21.d4! fighting fire with fire was the way). Nakamura quickly wrapped up the win. Nakamura whose chess grew up online still looks very much at home here.

In the other semi-final Ding Liren got off to a flying start when he absolutely strangled his opponent Yu Yangyi in game one in a beautiful positional effort, Yu Yangyi was better in game two but Ding escaped with a draw in a bishops of opposite colours endgame. Ding was generally a bit better in the third drawn game, in the final game of today's tie there was a sharp Two Knights Defence where Ding seemed to confuse his move order (10...h6?! 10..0-0 is better) but Yu soon went wrong himself. Then in a perfect example of Ben Finegold's "don't play f3!" advice - Yu played f3 and immediately had a lost position. Ding's 14...Bc5+ sets up the crushing 15...Qh3 after 50.Kh8 so Yu had to take a lost position instead. Ding got a long way towards winning spectacularly but when he went slightly wrong he just forced the draw he needed to take the match into Wednesday's third and final mini-match.

Tuesday 26th May: Carlsen-So and Karjakin-Dubov second set of mini-matches.