The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen beat Fabiano Caruana 3-1 to take the sole lead of his Invitational on the first day of the third round. Hikaru Nakamura beat Alireza Firouzja 3.5-0.5 but the match was spoiled by a disconnection in game one that left no real satisfactory solution. Nakamura now is in second place.

Carlsen played the Alekhine's Defence in the first game, something that he played against Firouzja in the banter blitz last week. Carlsen got a better position although he was unhappy with 23...c6 (23...Rd7) and indeed it seems Caruana was a bit better after 24.Qc3. Caruana's play became a bit too focused on Carlsen's weak kingside (25.c5! was Carlsen's suggestion) but instead he himself came under a vicious attack and after 30.Kg3 (30.Kg1 had to be tried) white was mated. In game 2 Carlsen played a quiet line of the Vienna System as white and obtained a very nice endgame advantage which he won handily. Game 3 was a wild Ruy Lopez that followed theory for a long time. Carlsen ended up being a bit worse (and perhaps a lot worse had 45.Qa2 been played by Caruana) but the game was drawn as was the fourth dead rubber game (a Four Knights with 4.h3 an opening that seems to be quite popular with top players in blitz).

Alireza Firouzja had a complete disaster of a day. In game 1 he took on Hikaru Nakamura's solid line against the Bf4 Queen's Gambit and obtained a winning position only to lose on time after there was a technical problem. If through no fault of his own a player has a disconnection then the game should be resumed - but Nakamura knew he was totally lost (his chances were due to the clock something that wouldn't be there after a resumption) and probably felt he'd taken one for the team already when he had a technical issue against Carlsen in the first round. Anyhow after over 30 minutes of argument the match resumed with the first game being counted as a draw. We will have to see the exact justification for this decision but no doubt this will lead to tighter rules for this circumstance in the future.

Game two was a knife-edge struggle until 36...Ke8? lost immediately for Firouzja. In game three Firouzja eventually built up a winning position but was short of time and completely messed things up even going on to lose. In the dead rubber Firouzja didn't seem to be bothered 11...c5 was bad as was 12...exd5 and the immediately catastrophic 13...Be6. One can't help feeling this match could have gone a completely different way had the first problem not happened.

Round 3 Standings: Carlsen (3 matches) 8pts, Nakamura (3) 7pts, Caruana (3) 5pts, MVL (2) 4pts, Ding (2) 4pts, Nepomniachtchi (2) 2pts, Firouzja (3) 0pts and Giri, Anish (2) 0pts

Round 3 Day 2 Pairings 23rd April 2020 3pm BST: MVL-Ding, Giri-Nepomniachtchi.