Preview on the Candidates: Daniel King on Fabiano Caruana

by Arne Kaehler
3/15/2020 – In his last "Preview on the Candidates 2020" Daniel King takes a look at the chances of Fabiano Caruana to win the Candidates and to challenge Magnus Carlsen again. Currently, Caruana is the world's number two but that is not the only reason why he is a favourite to win in Yekaterinburg. | Photo: Niki Riga / World Chess

Navigating the Ruy Lopez Vol.1-3 Navigating the Ruy Lopez Vol.1-3

The Ruy Lopez is one of the oldest openings which continues to enjoy high popularity from club level to the absolute world top. In this video series, American super GM Fabiano Caruana, talking to IM Oliver Reeh, presents a complete repertoire for White.

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The highest-rated player

Daniel King has profiled all eight candidates on his YouTube channel (with a bonus video of Teimour Radjabov) and in his last instalment he gets to the point very quickly: Fabiano Caruana is the top choice to win the Candidates 2020. With a rating of 2842 Caruana is the top seed in Yekaterinbug and closer to Magnus Carlsen (2862) than to Ding Liren (2805), the world's number three who also plays in the Candidates. However, in 2019 Caruana could not win a single game against Ding Liren but suffered a painful loss at the Sinquefield Cup 2019.

 

Still, 2019 was an excellent year for Caruana. And he started 2020 with one of the best performances of his career by winning the Tata Steel Tournament with 10 out of 13, distancing Carlsen by two points.

As King points out Caruana has gained a lot of confidence in the last months and that his opening preparation is still fantastic. In the video, King looks at a game of Fabiano Caruana against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, from the Grand Chess Tour tournament in Zagreb 2019.

Fabiano Caruana

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Arne Kaehler, a creative thinker who is passionate about board games in general was born in Hamburg and learned how to play chess at a very young age. Through teaching chess to youth teams and creating chess content on YouTube, Arne was able to extend this passion onto others and has even made an online chess course for anyone who wants to learn how to play this game. Currently, Arne blogs for the English news page of ChessBase and focuses on creating promotional and entertaining articles.