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
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.

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 mind who is passionate about board games in general, was born in Hamburg and learned to play chess at a young age. By teaching chess to youth teams and creating chess-related videos on YouTube, Arne was able to expand this passion and has even created an online course for anyone who wants to learn how to play chess. Arne writes for the English and German news sites, but focuses mainly on content for the ChessBase media channels.

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Raymond Labelle Raymond Labelle 3/16/2020 01:55
An article which would be interesting would be on the measures which are taken in respect of the virus during the tournament. Now, Europe has become the first source - will Europeans be submitted to a quarantine as the Chinese were? Will it be recommended that the players not shake hands? Will the players be asked not to be accompanied by family, spouse? Will they wear a mask? Will they be isolated from spetactors? Will the spectators only come from Russia? What about the media? Etc. Etc. Etc. Plenty of questions.
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