The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen looked relieved to have won the second set and levelled the best of 7 set of "Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Final benefiting Kiva" against Hikaru Nakamura. Carlsen had a torrid day being roundly defeated in game one and being much worse in game three for at least one move before taking his chance to equalise the match. A couple of errors from Nakamura in the second blitz game completed Carlsen's win.

In game one both Carlsen and Nakamura blitzed out moves in the unusual Vienna Variation of the Queen's Gambit that was played yesterday, even after Magnus' novelty 8.a4 Nakamura kept going too. After 17...Qd5 it was clear black was doing fine and after 19.b4 followed by 20.Ba3 (20.Nxb3 was about equal) black was better, Carlsen's 22.Rxg7 was already desperate (the computer's want him to give up the exchange with Rxb6 - not a decision many humans would make) Carlsen did manage to open up Nakamura's King but only at the cost of a huge amount of material and after avoiding a repetition Nakamura made his King safe and then used the b-pawn to win that Carlsen sacrificed all the way back on move 20 (there seems to have been a deep computer draw found but no human would have played it). Game two saw Hikaru play a well known sequence for a quick (almost instant) draw with white, whether this was clever or not is unclear, it nearly paid off for him but in the end did not. In game three Carlsen chose a highly unusual setup in the English but after his clever-clever 12.Bb2 he was hit by the sequence 12...Bf5 13.Qc2 d3 when black was a lot better - but he should have played 15...h5 ("I thought I was completely lost" Carlsen said of this move afterwards) after his 15...Bg4 the position was about equal and Carlsen said that after 16.d4 "I was already feeling a whole lot better" - then Hikaru blundered with 20...Bf7? losing a pawn - he was clearly extremely cross with himself but after getting down to only a minute and a half left on the clock he found a strong sequence of moves that at least made Carlsen work for it but in the end there was no escape and he won in 59 moves. Game four was an exact repeat of game two with another short draw taking the match into a blitz tie-break - such things are clearly controversial with some people but Carlsen was fine with it and he on occasion has used similar tactics in this series. In the first blitz game there was a sharp Queen's Gambit which quickly settled down to a question as to whether Carlsen's Knight on d6 was a major asset or not, once it was exchanged a draw was more or less inevitable. In the second blitz game there was a Berlin which settled down to a manoeuvring game - with 25...Be5 Carlsen equalised but Nakamura tried to keep things going 27.Qxd7 was a safe draw, after 27.Rxd7? things were getting tricky and Carlsen was much better and 29.Qe4?? dropped mate or a rook and ended the game. Carlsen

Carlsen will be relieved to have got level at 1-1 but Nakamura is still giving him a lot of problems and today definitely could have gone the other way. Set 3 is on Suday 16th August 2020 3pm BST.