Fear not, I will maintain my objectivity, though I am happy that both Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura won today, getting back to within half a point of Ian Nepomniachtchi and Dommaraju Gukesh, the seemingly permanent leaders of the event.
In fact, the leaders played today, with Nepo having White. Had either player won they would have been in a great position to win the tournament with a full point lead over their victim and a point and a half lead over the next closest pursuers with just four rounds to go. Neither player achieved anything of substance, however, and while Nepo may have had a brief nibble early in the middlegame it quickly fizzled. As often happened in the tournament, the players soon understood that the draw was inevitable, and it was agreed to after Black’s 40th move.
Had Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa defeated Santosh Vidit he could have caught the leaders, but Vidit defended well on the black side of a 4.d3 Bc5 5.Bxc6 Berlin and made a comfortable draw. Pragg thus remained half a point out of first, with Vidit another half a point behind.
Pragg has company, thanks to the Americans’ wins. Nakamura defeated Nijat Abasov on the white side of a 5.d3 Petroff/Exchange French, but it wasn’t easy. Abasov’s 13th move was a serious error, and while Nakamura’s reaction was good he let Abasov slip most of the way out of his troubles. No matter: Nakamura outplayed him again, let him slip again…and then Abasov even wound up with the advantage. The critical moment came on 36, when Abasov, enjoying both a positional plus and a substantial lead on the clock, spent 10 seconds before playing 36…Qe7?? and obtaining a lost position. Nakamura let some of the advantage slip with 38.Ng3, but a final Abasov error on move 44 finally cost him the game, for good.
Caruana, meanwhile, took advantage of the tournament’s other suffering soul, Alireza Firouzja. In addition to Firouzja’s considerable woes at the board, he has also suffered from some weird controversies the past couple of rounds. In round 9 he was admonished by the arbiters for his loud shoes, and in round 10 Firouzja’s father was escorted out of the playing arena after complaining (a little too energetically) that he wasn’t allowed to watch his son play after the 15-minute period at the start of the game had expired. (As an anti-cheating measure, the organizers prohibit spectators associated with the players’ teams from watching after the first 15 minutes of the game. Initially they weren’t allowed at all, but thanks to Firouzja’s father’s lobbying at the start of the tournament they made the 15 minute concession. I hope desperately for the sake of the event that Firouzja doesn’t quit the event in protest.)
But back to the game. Caruana played 6.Rg1 against the Najdorf, which then turned into a sort of Dragadorf. Firouzja blundered with 13…Be6, but Caruana missed the attractive refutation starting with 14.Bxe6 fxe6 15.e5!, and the game reverted to approximate equality. Nevertheless, Caruana still went on to outplay Firouzja, helped by the latter’s (serious) time trouble, and despite mutual errors in time trouble the trend was in Caruana’s favor, and by the time they made the time control after move 40 the American was winning.
The games, with my comments, are here. Today (Tuesday) is a rest day for the players, and on Wednesday the action resumes with these pairings:
Praggnanandhaa (5.5) - Nakamura (5.5)
Vidit (5) - Nepomniachtchi (6)
Gukesh (6) - Caruana (5.5)
Firouzja (3.5) - Abasov (3)
Is a six-way tie for first possible? Here’s hoping for the mother of all playoffs.