Gashimov R10: From Fool to King

The Vugar Gashimov Memorial, is being held in Shamkir, Azerbaijan, from the 20th to 30th of April, in memory of the great Vugar Gashimov, who passed away on the 10th of January 2014. The tournament is divided into two groups. The A Group features six players: World Champion Magnus Carlsen (2881), Fabiano Caruana (2783), Sergey Karjakin (2772), Hikaru Nakamura (2772), and the two Azeri players Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2760) and Teimour Radjabov (2713). The B group consists of ten players, the top five seeds from various countries and the bottom five are all from Azerbaijan.

Round Ten

Daniel King shows the game Carlsen vs Caruana

Final round: go!

Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar ½-½ Karjakin, Sergey
Karjakin is very faithful to his double fianchetto variation against the English. This seemed to give him no problems today as Mamedyarov's initiative was easily neutralized. A few fireworks were seen on the board, but they simply ended in a perpetual check.

Time for reflection: Shakhriyar will have to figure out what went wrong in this event

Karjakin's zero wins and zero losses gives him the worst tiebreak of those tied at 50%

Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ Radjabov, Teimour
Of course nowadays it is impossible to escape having a few Berlins in the tournament. The last one of the event was between Nakamura and Radjabov, a little disappointing because they are such creative and fighting players. The game can be summarized with the following two diagrams:

Position after Black's 27...Rh5

Position after White's 77. Rd3

Neither side did anything productive for 50 moves, and according to the 50-move rule the game is a draw if neither side has captured any piece or pushed a pawn in 50 moves. Not the most exciting game, Black literally shuffle his h-rook back and forth for the majority of that time.

Nakamura took some time from shuffling pieces to watch other games

Radjabov did something similar

A long game, but not one we can recommend readers to replay closely

Carlsen, Magnus 1-0 Caruana, Fabiano
Of course everyone's eyes were on this game today. Carlsen came in with an unorthodox opening, Caruana sacrificed a pawn and mayhem ensued:

On purpose?

This is not the first time Magnus has started badly a tournament (see e.g. London 2010, Wijk aan Zee 2011), but come from behind to win it in the end. In a discussion with the journalist D.T.Max of the New Yorker Frederic Friedel proposed an interesting theory: "Magnus is so strong that he is simply bored. I know from personal experience that he bores easily. So he has come up with a new startegy to make things more interesting for himself: play like an idiot in the first few games, move to the bottom of the table, and then try to win the tournament anyway." Fred claims the New Yorker pressured him into saying "like an idiot" for the story, but in essence the thesis was that Magnus was making things unnecessarily hard for himself out of pure boredom.

The story in the March 21 2011 issue of the New Yorker story can be read here.
Do you agree with Fred's theory? Tell us in the discussion section below!

Whatever the case was Carlsen proved that he can play some very weak chess, as he did against Caruana and Radjabov, and then play some unbelievably precise chess as he did today. He is not untouchable, by any means, Carlsen losing isn't a spectacular surprise, but his ability to win games is out of this world. Carlsen won more games in this tournament alone than Nakamura, Karjakin, Radjabov and Mamedyarov combined!

The face of concentration?

Nothing can be done when Carlsen plays impeccable chess

Replay today's games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Standings

Tiebreak: Number of Wins

Images from the official web site

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: Group A – Group B The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.