The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen turned the two white's he started with into two points at the start of the Gashimov Memorial following a win against Hikaru Nakamura. Carlsen played for the tiniest of edges which he used to cause Nakamura some problems and the in subsequent time pressure Nakamura "got it all wrong". 17...Nd6 allowed Carlsen to pin the knight with 18.Ba3 which needed addressing and 18...f5 weakened the kingside, neither necessarily errors but they did give Carlsen something to work with. 21.Qf3 encouraged Nakamura to give up the centre. Nakamura thought 30...e5 was an improvement and highlighted 33...Nb6 as the losing error. Nakamura had hoped that white's rook would get trapped on the kingside but when it didn't and a second pawn fell it was only a matter of time before Carlsen converted. Another fine performance by Carlsen and his nineth win against Nakamura without reply.

The other games were tame affairs leaving the stage open for this game of the day. Much of the post-game press conference centred on some rather inelegant postures Carlsen struck during the fifth hour. The post-game press conference was a rather tense affair but the players conversed in a polite manner. Carlsen was happy with his start but wouldn't entertain discussions of scoring 9/10 to go over 2900 because it pretty much isn't going to happen.

Round 2 Standings: Carlsen 2pts, Karjakin, Caruana, Radjabov 1pt, Nakamura, Mamedyarov 0.5pts.

Round 3 Pairings: 11am BST 12pm CSET Tues 22nd April: Nakamura-Mamedyarov, Karjakin-Carlsen, Radjabov-Caruana.