Sinquefield Cup, Round 6
Caruana beats Nepo to close to within half a point of Firouzja.
There were some short games in round 6 of the Sinquefield Cup, but the shortest of them all was decisive. My first thought when I saw his blunder was to wonder if Ian Nepomniachtchi had never played or faced a standard Dragon Sicilian. That’s almost impossible to believe, but the simple, crushing tactic Fabiano Caruana played belongs in a Dragon 101 class, or maybe 102. It’s the sort of thing a moderately experienced club player who specializes in the Dragon would have found.
Indeed, as it turns out, there are only 22 Nepo games in the regular Dragon (I didn’t look for Accelerated or Hyper-Accelerated Dragons), mostly from the white side, and very few of them involved the sort of traditional Bc4 + 0-0-0 variation that arose in this game. The point, which I also discuss in the notes, is that it’s easy to miss tactics if you don’t already have a sense that there’s something there, and if you don’t have a lot of experience with the Dragon - or whatever opening it is - you may very well miss opportunities or fall into a blunder yourself.
Whatever the story, Nepo blundered, Caruana caught it, and the game was over after just 25 moves. With this very easy win with the black pieces, Caruana caught up with Wesley So in second place, half a point behind Alireza Firouzja, the tournament and overall Grand Chess Tour leader.
Speaking of So and Firouzja, they were paired. Firouzja had little trouble with Black in a 4.Bg5 Grünfeld, and if there was any opportunity for So to make something of the game it would have been with 14.Nd2. A key move for Firouzja was 17…a5, which led to mass liquidation and an easy draw that could have finished even before move 32 were it not for the Sofia rules.
The game between Ding Liren and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu was similar: also 32 moves, also in a 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 opening, and also featuring good prep by Black and a draw. There were differences—for one, it was a King’s Indian rather than a Grünfeld. In broad outline, though, it was similar, and with Ding not trying either 17.Ne2 or 21.b3 Pragg had little to worry about.
The other two draws were entirely different from the ones already mentioned. Anish Giri was winning for much of his game with Nodirbek Abdusattorov, thanks in part to the latter’s 15…f4(? - or maybe ??[?]). Abdusattorov is one of the biggest fighters at the top level - though they’re all good fighters or they wouldn’t be there - and Giri didn’t manage to finish him off. Perhaps time trouble played a role as well; in any case, Giri’s last chance to maintain a winning advantage came on move 46, when 46.Ne3 probably would have done the job. Missing that, Abdusattorov was able to survive without any further moments of high anxiety.
Gukesh Dommaraju also had his opportunities, against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and in this case the game came down to a very subtle question that Gukesh may not have even realized *was* a question. Black had just played 41…g4, preparing …f3. Should White play 42.hxg4 hxg4 43.a6, or play 43.a6 right away? In favor of the swap is that he buys himself another 30 seconds on the clock, which could prove invaluable when trying to solve some complicated problem. In favor of not swapping was…well, maybe Gukesh was already too short of time to work it out.
The answer was that in the very line that happened in the game, after Gukesh swapped on g4, 53.Kxg3 would have been a blunder, so he played 53.Qc4 and the game soon reached a drawn ending. But had Gukesh not traded on g4, he could have played 52.Kxg3! (the move number is one less because the pawns weren’t traded) and after 52…f1Q 53.h4 is mate!
So, once again we have a round with a lot of draws - this is the fourth round out of six with four draws in five games (one round even had five draws, while the other was a comparative bloodbath with only three draws) - but there could easily have been three decisive games. Better luck tomorrow? We’ll see.
In the meantime, here are today’s games, with my comments.