Chessable Masters: Nakamura vs. Caruana, followed by Nakamura vs. Caruana, followed by Nakamura vs. Caruana
Meanwhile, unhappy days for Carlsen.
The Chessable Masters has just finished, and if you like seeing Hikaru Nakamura play Fabiano Caruana you’ll love this tournament. By now many of you will be familiar with the double-elimination format, and in this case it resulted in three, count ‘em, three matches between Nakamura and Caruana.
But one round at a time. The winners’ bracket consists of best-of-four matches with a 15’+3” time control, followed by a bid Armageddon game if necessary. (The players say how little time they’d be willing to take to have Black against White’s 15 minutes in the Armageddon game; the low bid wins.)
In round 1, the pairings were Magnus Carlsen-Vladislav Artemiev, Caruana-Le Quang Liem, Nakamura-Vladimir Fedoseev, and Wesley So-Levon Aronian. Remarkably, the first three matches all went to the Armageddon game. In the Carlsen-Artemiev match, Artemiev really should have won in regular time, but Carlsen escaped. After Black won all four games it was Armageddon time, and here Artemiev broke the trend and won with White.
Caruana had no trouble with Black against Le, and was winning both white games; nevertheless, after four draws it was time for Armageddon. Caruana had White again, and this time he won.
After two draws with Nakamura, Fedoseev won game 3 with Black, but Nakamura struck back with Black in game 4 and saved a (just about) dead lost position to draw with Black in the Armageddon to win the match.
Finally, Aronian won game 1 with Black, but unfortunately for him So took advantage of the black pieces in games 2 and 4 to win the match. (So somehow managed to avoid losing with White in game 3. I’m being facetious, of course, but only slightly. Black scored insanely well in this event, starting with a 9-2 advantage in decisive games in this round.)
In the next round of the winners’ bracket, Caruana overcame Artemiev with difficulty. Game 1 was a normal draw, and game 2 was drawn when Artemiev failed to convert a decisive advantage with Black. Artemiev won with the white pieces in game 3, but then lost in game 4. Caruana took Black in the Armageddon and could have won, but was satisfied to allow Artemiev a match-losing draw by repetition.
Nakamura won the other match, defeating So (with Black) in game 2 and surviving up-and-down battles in games 3 and 4 to win 2.5-1.5.
That resulted in the final match two involve two undefeated players, and Caruana triumphed over Nakamura 2.5-0.5. Both wins were with White, but he should have won game 2 (with Black) while Nakamura’s loss in game 3 happened when he stumbled into a helpmate from what was an equal position.
This was not the end of the event, because Caruana had to play the winner of the losers’ bracket. These were best-of-two rather than best-of-four matches, and here in brief is how things went. The losers of the first day’s matches faced off, with these results: Carlsen and Le had a pair of clean draws, and the Armageddon game was also clean. Carlsen had Black there, so he advanced and Le was out of the event. Aronian defeated Fedoseev 1.5-0.5, but rather than play each other they progressed to the losers of the second day’s matches. Thus we had Carlsen-So and Aronian-Artemiev. Carlsen won game 1 with Black and won the match 1.5-0.5, while Aronian and Artemiev each won with Black before an Armageddon draw saw Aronian advance. (He was winning in the final position with Black, but the draw sufficed.) Finally, Carlsen defeated Aronian 2-0, setting up a Carlsen-Nakamura showdown to see who would face Caruana for the title.
Their first two games were drawn, and in the Armageddon game Carlsen with White more than once had good winning chances. Nakamura defended well and kept working his way back to equality, and then…anti-climax: Carlsen mouse-slipped and blundered his queen, and that was it: game over, match over. (He obviously meant to play 63.Qg6xb6, when the position is “officially” equal but White has an extra pawn and, probably more importantly, a few extra seconds on the clock. Instead, the queen/mouse “dropped” on f6, hanging the queen, and White resigned immediately.) This was obviously unfortunate for Carlsen, but if for superstitious reasons Carlsen cuts his hair and gets rid of his horrific man bun it may be for the greater good.
Time for Caruana-Nakamura, the sequel. Nakamura won game 1 and Caruana won game 2 - with Black in both cases, of course. Nakamura also won game 3, with Black, before the trend finally broke and Nakamura won game 4 with White. Now both players had lost a match, so they had to do it one more time, this time in the best-of-two format. You won’t be surprised to learn that Black went 3-0, and the lucky Armageddon winner was Nakamura.
It was a fine, resilient performance by Nakamura, and Caruana had an excellent event as well. It was a shaky event for Carlsen, but one can hope that eliminating the man bun will solve his problems. More seriously, it will be interesting to see if there is much difference in his performance once he’s the ex-world champion, a state of affairs that’s about to take place. But more on that, next.
I don't know, I find it somehow reassuring that someone sporting a manbun like Carlsen's can still achieve some measure of success in life.