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Wesley So continues to lead the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis. With 4/6 points, he stands a half point ahead of Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alireza Firouzja, although Caruana has played one more game than the three players mentioned above.
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.
While Caruana is set to face Hans Niemann with black in his last game of the tournament (he was supposed to play Magnus Carlsen in round 9), Nepo will play Levon Aronian with black, and So will defend his lead against Firouzja, also with black.
Everything is still up for grabs in a tournament that has traditionally been hard-fought until the very end. The one exception, of course, was Caruana’s incredible run in 2014, when he scored seven wins in a row and finished the event with 8½/10 and a 3098 performance rating.
Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes
The first game to finish on Friday was the one facing Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Nepomniachtchi, an encounter that followed 23 moves of theory out of a Nimzo-Indian Defence. Similarly, theory was followed until moves 19 and 27 in Caruana vs Aronian and Dominguez vs Firouzja, respectively.
Both Dominguez and Aronian had very slight advantages in imbalanced positions. However, Caruana and Firouzja — importantly — had considered entering these somewhat inferior positions during their preparation.
Aronian did show a nice trick in a sideline though, the kind of variation grandmasters calculate frequently in what for mere mortals seem like dead drawn positions.
This position did not appear on the board, as the players battled it out in an endgame with rooks and bishops. Here, however, a nice variation starts with 24...Bh4, a move that looks useless at first sight — 25.g3 just helps White, right?
But that is not the whole story. Black has 25...f4, when grabbing the bishop fails to e4-e3 and a pawn promotes. White can still draw with 26.gxf4, though.
Winning Chess Strategies Vol.1 and 2
Throughout this video course, we will study how to master sacrifices and the initiative in several aspects: opposite-coloured bishops, the bishop pair, the exchange sacrifice, launching an attack, and the good moment to sacrifice will be covered.
As GM Karsten Müller often notes, “Endgames can be very deep!”
Analysing the ending — Levon Aronian | Photo: Lennart Ootes
In the longest game of the day, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave played a d4-opening against Hans Niemann, something he very rarely does. As noted by the US grandmaster, this might have been provoked by the fact that MVL has been struggling in the tournament and wanted to try something different to shake things up.
A tense struggle followed in a structure arising from the Exchange variation of the Grünfeld. Correct play by both sides led to a 55-move draw.
In the post-game interview, Niemann talked about how tough it has been for him to deal with the drama surrounding Carlsen’s withdrawal. Niemann told Alejandro Ramirez:
The Ragozin is being played by every top grandmaster in the world - it is time you also add it to your repertoire to get interesting and dynamic positions against 1. d4!
GM Alejandro Ramirez analyses every single move that White can play once the Ragozin is reached, but due to several transpositional possibilities he always emphasises strategic goals to keep in mind.
I don’t think I even need to verbalize the mental pressure and everything that’s going on. Maybe only I can understand this, or people that have been through similar things. [...] This is extremely difficult.
Niemann is set to face Caruana and Nepomniachtchi in the final two games of his first-ever super tournament.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Hans Niemann | Photo: Lennart Ootes
