Candidate’s Revenge

Judging by the rather small prizes for the spectacular news about the first public chess table in the Serbian city of Smederevo, it seems that the majority of you have decided to follow that FIDE Candidate Tournament 2022 in Madrid more carefully.

Well, it wasn’t exactly boring there. It just took a long time. For example, the clash between a countrymen, an Italian American and a Japanese American was extremely interesting from a psychological point of view.

On Sunday, their 47th mutual clash took place, which has a prehistory. Fabiano Caruana has not lost to Hikaru Nakamura since 2015. In the first round (on June 17th), Caruana had white pieces and inflicted a painful defeat on Nakamura in the most drawish of all games – Rui Lopez, the bl**dy Berlin defense...

So, Fabi won seven games in a row. The samurai in Nakamura must have been screaming before the rematch in the Round 8th. You could almost smell the arson of his burning desire. And again we saw the Rui Lopez game, but this time with Nakamura behind the white pieces. The surprise, however, came around the 11th move, when Caruana opted for the so-called Dilworth’s variant that Dilworth himself didn’t play – because he didn’t have a computer in the middle of the last century!

This is a variation of the Open Ruy Lopez, where Black gives two minor pieces for rook and pawn, all hoping that the overzealous opponent will make a blunder. By the way, my time-waste trainer once showed me this variant, but I never seriously considered it, partly because it seemed like a joke to me, and partly because I have been meeting with Mr. Alzheimer's more and more often.

But I am not writing this for myself, but for the winner, Hikaru Nakamura. You simply have to see his feverishly enthusiastic vengeful analysis. If he speaks too fast for you, slow down the video at least 50%:

Duration / Трајање: 21:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U25ur3d_oXQ

There are six rounds left until the end of the tournament. Then we will know who will be the challenger of the champion Magnus Carlsen, or which two will play for the title if he still gives up. Everyone else will be free to participate in our Hive tournaments:

Hive Chess Tournaments / Хајв турнири