The Week in Chess

Hikaru Nakamura had a surprisingly comfortable victory against Ian Nepomniachtchi in the fourth round (day 8) of the Magnus Carlsen Invitational. Ding Liren eventually beat Anish Giri in an Armageddon tie-break in the other match of the day.

The first game Nakamura-Nepomniachtchi was a Winawer French Defence where both players played extremely quickly for quite some time. 21...b5? (21...Re4!) was the start of Nepomniachtchi's problems and then after 24...Rg6? (24...Kd7) white won a pawn for nothing with Rxd5 and black's position collapsed. Game 2 was again a discussion in the Bf4 Queen's Gambit where Nakamura played his favourite solid system. Nepomniachtchi's 19...Qb2 probably wasn't right and left black a little better, a few moves later 28.Qa2 was poor and black was winning. 53.Ng2+ was Nakamura's missed win at the end and he had to settle for a draw. Nakamura got a huge winning advantage at white in a Sicilian straight out of the opening but talked himself out of 21.Nf5, which he saw and exchanged pieces to a draw. In the final game Nakamura had comfortable equality as black - Nepomniachtchi's 40.Bd5? left him much worse but Nakamura just steered for safety and a 2.5-1.5 win. Nakamura moves into second place and is perhaps one more match win away from securing final four qualification.

Ding Liren beat Anish Giri in an Armageddon tie-break to improve his chances of final four qualification but it was not a convincing performance. The match saw a quiet draw in game 1, a Ding win in game two after Giri blundered with 25.Nc3 (25.Ng3 or 25.Qc4 were just equal). Giri won game three with a smooth win and looked to be heading for tie-break before getting himself into a tangle and being totally lost after 32.Bc2+? (32.Qe7 was strictly forced) but Ding on the verge of winning the match made the bad move 38...f4 and the game was draw. Ding Liren needed a drew with black in the final Armageddon to win the match. These Armageddon games have been very poor so far and again there was an opening disaster, this time for Giri who played very sharply and then played the practically losing 11.g3. Ding did let Giri back into the game a bit but not enough to avoid the draw and the loss of the match.

Round 4 Standings: Carlsen 11pts, Nakamura 10pts, Caruana, Ding 8pts, MVL, Nepomniachtchi 5pts, Giri 1pt, Firouzja 0pts.

Round 5 Day 1 pairings Sun 26th April 2020 15:00 BST: Giri-Carlsen and MVL-Firouzja

Round 5 Day 2 pairings Mon 27th April 2020 15:00 BST: Caruana-Nakamura and Nepomniachtchi-Ding