Nakamura wins LCC Super Rapid Play

Super Rapid Play Open rounds six to ten

Report by John Saunders

Hikaru Nakamura of the USA won the London Super Rapidplay Open with an outstanding score of 9½/10, having conceded just the one draw in the sixth round to Matthew Sadler. Second on his own, a full point behind Nakamura on 8½, was Anish Giri of the Netherlands. Ten players shared third place on 8 points: Fabiano Caruana (Italy), Vishy Anand (India), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Nigel Short, Nick Pert and Simon Williams (all England), Alex Lenderman and Daniel Naroditsky (both USA), Eric Hansen (Canada), and Alon Greenfeld (Israel).

It was a remarkable event, and needed a remarkable winner. It got one: on the Sunday Hikaru (photo above) was close to unplayable, with a powerful 4.0/4 finish including the scalps of four of his elite London Chess Classic rivals (note in all diaries: the Classic starts Wednesday). Mickey Adams, Anish Giri, Fabiano Caruana and Vishy Anand all lowered their colours before Hikaru. Only Vladimir Kramnik escaped him, if only because he didn’t play him – although he did last year. Cast your mind back a year and you will recall that Vlad was Hikaru’s swindle victim in the semi-final of the 2013 London Classic Super 16. Hikaru went on to defeat Boris Gelfand in the final, so this is his second successive victory in this format of the game. Hikaru’s runaway rapidplay has added spice to this year’s Classic: you can be sure that all five of his rivals will be out for revenge.

Start of round six, with Nick Pert vs Vishy Anand (and Peter Wells vs Loek van Wely in the background)

With his two London triumphs, Hikaru unofficially joins a select band of super-GMs for whom the UK capital has proved a fertile ground for repeated successes and who perhaps deserve the title ‘London master’. Garry Kasparov can look back on one and a half world title matches won here (whilst no doubt trying to forget that it was also here that he ultimately relinquished his title); Vlad Kramnik has his victory over Garry here, plus a London Classic success; and it was in London that Magnus Carlsen became world number one, qualified for a world title and won three Classic titles. And those of us with longish memories will remember the young and largely unknown IM who came, saw and conquered at the final Lloyds Bank Masters in 1994. That was Alexander Morozevich and his score, in a spooky parallel with 2014, was 9½/10.

Let’s step back a minute and take a look at some stats. The PGN file of games played on the top ten boards, 100 in all, shows that only 17 of these top-end encounters ended in draws. 83% decisive games is enough to make any tournament organiser or armchair spectator salivate.

The titled player count shows that 34 GMs, 40 IMs and 30 with lower titles, took part, from 48 different countries, with 266 from England, followed by 16 from France and 14 from Norway. 405 players took part in total: 821 white wins, 234 draws and 757 black wins, making 1,812 in all and 87% decisive games.

To the play: the overnight leaders were Sadler, Nakamura, Caruana, Howell, Giri and Kramnik. In round six the top board game between Sadler and Nakamura was drawn.

The English GM (above left) had two extra pawns at one juncture but he failed to consolidate his advantage and allowed some resourceful counterplay.

David Howell (above right) tried erecting a Berlin Wall to keep out Fabiano Caruana (left) but the Italian-American super-GM used an exchange sacrifice to undermine its foundations. It may not have been fatal but for Howell’s perennial enemy, the clock. A more celebrated Berlin Wall builder was on the next board, but he was facing a much weirder edifice, put up by an avant-garde Dutch architect for a niche market... (a niche market – see what I did there? Oh, please yourselves).

In this round six picture you see, from left to right, Luke McShane, Anish Giri vs Vladimir Kramnik,
Simen Agdestein vs Andreas Hagen, Michael Adams vs Eric Hansen, Mark Hebden vs Petter Haugli

There was a game for nostalgia addicts on board seven, with Speelman and Short reprising their Candidates’ rivalry of the 1980s/90s. End to end stuff, as soccer commentators like to say, but finally ending in a draw.

Round seven, and we already know that Giri and Caruana drew, thus bringing to an end each other’s 100% score. Nakamura and McShane caught up with them, beating Adams and Agdestein respectively. Mickey loosened his position around moves 18-23 and Hikaru took full advantage.

Luke (above left) seemed to make steady progress to victory against Simen but perhaps the Norwegian GM could have found a perpetual check had he more time. Actually, the game contained another sweet little tactical point which only a GM with plenty of time on his clock (or a computer with a couple of nano-seconds to spare) could find. I’ll set it as a puzzle.

McShane,Luke J - Agdestein,Simen [C09]
London Chess Classic Rapidplay (7.4), 07.12.2014

Black to play
White has just played 28.Nf3xd4 to capture a pawn.
His opponent replied 28...Ne5 but what had both players missed?

As is standard at the London Classic, spectators will of course be able to enjoy the action on the official website.

Round 8: Nakamura-Giri was a long, featureless, manoeuvring game until beyond move 70, with White still having around 4 minutes left to Black’s 3½ minutes. But then a small error, 74...h5?, allowed Hikaru to win the d-pawn. Anish probably thought he could have won Hikaru’s f-pawn but he must have realised then that it would have left his king in a mating net. He spotted that one but promptly fell for another trick and was lost. Luke’s loss was the result of an injudicious pawn snatch.

In Round 9, Fabiano Caruana had white against Hikaru Nakamura, with both on the leading score of 7½/8. Another manoeuvring game ensued and it was very hard to judge who had the advantage till around move 40, when it started to looked as if Hikaru’s pieces had a bit more scope. But clock times were rather more significant: at move 40 Fabiano had 1 minute 33 seconds left to Hikaru’s 8 minutes and 34 seconds. Even allowing for the ten-second increment, that is too big a difference. Looking back, it seems as if Fabiano’s extravagant think of almost five minutes on the 18.c5 advance may have cost him dearly in the long run. On such trifles do titles depend. The blunder came on move 47, but even if he had found a better move, I still wouldn’t have given much for his chances. Rapidplay is as much about the clock as what happens on the board and Hikaru’s careful management of his time, allied to his canny manoeuvring, won him this game.

That meant that Hikaru was on 8½/9 going into the final round. Vishy Anand was the only player within half a point of him, having beaten one of the last of the English aspirants to the top prize, David Howell, in a long game (the other home contender was Matthew Sadler, who drew with Kramnik in round nine).

In the final round Hikaru had the white pieces against Vishy, these two being the only players left who could win the £8,000 first prize. Hikaru opened with 1.b3 – exactly as he had done in the first round against Theo Slade. I don’t know if it was intentional but this topping and tailing of the competition was a nice ironic touch. Vishy didn’t allow the time disparity to get too big as did Fabiano, but a fateful excursion with his rook to snaffle Hikaru’s h-pawn proved his undoing. Of course, he needed a win to take the first prize, so we have to commend him for trying. But the endgame soon proved to be a disaster and Hikaru didn’t need the safety net of a draw but could win much as he pleased.

And so the winner, with a score of 9½/10, was Hikaru Nakamura

Well, what a fantastic event! And we still have the Classic itself to look forward to on Wednesday. You’ll be hearing from me again very soon...

Solution to the McShane-Agdestein puzzle

We add one more position that tickled our tactical fantasy:

All photos by John Saunders

Top final standings (after ten rounds)

• Full results of all 212 players here

Elite Event Schedule

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