The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen was defeated by Fabiano Caruana in Round 4 of the Gashimov Memorial. Carlsen last lost 31 games ago, again against Caruana in June 2013 at the Tal Memorial. The game itself was not terribly special, Caruana improved with 13.Ne4 in a Berlin Defence over a previous game against Ponomariov, Carlsen just didn't settle on a good setup, was obviously not happy with the way things were going and just dropped a pawn for no compensation. Caruana took his time to convert but Carlsen never looked like escaping. Carlsen said that he thought from the morning "it's a bad day" and he just seemed out of sorts. Caruana's calculations throughout the game just seemed better than Carlsen's. With five rounds a rest day and five rounds Carlsen wasn't the only player who seemed in need of a day off.

Sergey Karjakin was feeling the pace a little after some long games and played a sharp variation of the Caro-Kann he knew led to a dynamic draw with best play but hoped his opponent Shakhriyar Mamedyarov wouldn't find his way through, he did and a quick but probably theoretically important, draw was agreed.

Teimour Radjabov and Hikaru Nakamura played a complex Slav where Nakamura seemed to have almost equalised but the Rook ending whilst probably never more than drawn allowed his opponent to really make him work hard for quite a long time before the game ended in a draw.

Round 4 standings: Caruana, Carlsen 2.5/4pts, Karjakin, Radjabov, Nakamura 2pts, Mamedyarov 1pts.

Round 5 Pairings Thurs 25th April 2014: Mamedyarov-Caruana, Carlsen-Radjabov, Nakamura-Karjakin.