The Week in Chess

Hikaru Nakamura beat Magnus Carlsen 1.5-0.5 in a blitz tie-break in set three of their Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Final benefiting Kiva match. Nakamura has continued to impress both with the level of his opening preparation and in how he has stayed ahead on the clock in pretty much every game. This was decisive today. Carlsen is not finding this easy at all having looked so impressive in the last weeks of the tour.

Game one was a Berlin Defence where Carlsen won a nice positional game but the decisive error was 22.Rad1 allowing 22...Qh3 after 22.Bxc5 or Kh2 it was all to play for. Carlsen took a short draw in game two and like yesterday for Nakamura it didn't pay off. In game three Nakamura came armed with a new approach and Carlsen seemingly just didn't appreciate the danger the bishops of opposite colours posed to him until too late, in spite of being a pawn up Carlsen was just lost because he could hardly protect a single pawn, a very strange misjudgment from him. Game four saw Carlsen reach for the London System and Nakamura seemed quite comfortably placed as black even after Carlsen gave up a pawn to sideline a knight the game still didn't depart much from equality - this defensive performance pleased Nakamura the most of all the games today. In the first blitz game Carlsen made a very basic oversight and dropped a pawn and with it the game as he had no compensation whatsoever. In the final game Carlsen built up a winning advantage but got way behind on the clock and in the end blew all the advantage although after that he missed a final winning opportunity.

Score Nakamura 2 Carlsen 1. Tomorrow the fourth game of the final will take place on Monday 17th August at 3pm UK time.