The Week in Chess

Hikaru Nakamura defeated Fabiano Caruana with black in a sharp Sicilian Najdorf which turned around in the final few moves before first time control. Nakamura gave up a pawn after which he thought he had freed his position and equalised. However he realised that things were a bit trickier than he first thought. Caruana decided to avoid a techincal ending and instead started to attack and in time trouble his position first became uncoordinated and finally he allowed Nakamura a decisive attack. A rather sudden turn around.

Levon Aronian came close to defeating Sergey Karjakin in an interesting Queens Gambit Meran. 14...Be7 was an interesting novelty 18...Ba6 was probably a bad move leaving white with a strong attack. 23...f5 left Aronian with two attacking tries 24.exf6 which is interesting and 24.Ng3 which the computers suggest is close to winning. Sadly for Aronian he spent a lot of time on the former and short of time he decided to agree a draw by perpetual check.

Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik drew a heavyweight Queen's Gambit struggle full of subtleties. There were small changes of assessment but they traded into a simplified ending when they agreed a draw.

Round 1 Standings (2 points for a win 1 for a draw): Nakamura 2pts, Anand, Kramnik, Aronian, Karjakin 1pt, Caruana 0pts.

Round 2 Pairings: Kramnik-Nakamura, Karjakin-Caruana and Anand-Aronian.