Sunday 1 May 2016

Wins for Carlsen, Caruana and Nakamura

Three big events all finished within days of each other, with wins for three of the biggest names in world chess (and a third placing for probably *the* biggest).
Fabiano Caruna won the US Championship at his first attempt, scoring 8.5/11 and finishing a full point ahead of Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So. These 3 players then went on to play in the 'Ultimate Blitz Challenge', along with Gary Kasparov, in a $50,000 18 round event.
Nakamura emerged victorious after 2 days play with 11/18, ahead of So on 10. Kasparov finished strongly to score 9.5, while Caruana struggled throughout, ending with 5.5. To indicate how long it has been since Kasparov had retired from full time chess, this apparently was the first time he had played any of these players in a competitive game.
Over in Norway, Magnus Carlsen has won the Norway Chess Classic for the first time.  He finished on 6/9, ahead of Lev Aronian on 5.5. As with events of this nature there were a significant number of drawn games, but Carlsen provided the entertainment factor with with 4 wins (and a loss to Aronian), while Nils Grandelius and Pavel Eljanov contributed at the other end of the table, being beaten up by a lot of the field.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Eljanov really had a poor event. No real blunders (except maybe against Li Chao by computer standards in a very sharp queen ending with promotion), just seemed to wilt in too many games.