Wesley So said he didn’t realise it was Hikaru Nakamura’s birthday after ruthlessly exploiting his opponent’s blunder on move 13 to almost seal victory in the overall Grand Chess Tour. Vladimir Kramnik said it’s “never personal” for him to win a chess game, but few were buying that after he crushed his arch-rival Veselin Topalov in 28 moves. It was a round that ended abruptly, and nowhere more so than when an apologetic Levon Aronian beat Mickey Adams after a one-move blunder in a position heading nowhere. MVL-Giri and Caruana-Anand were drawn, but not without some adventures.
The quality of the chess we saw recently in New York was perhaps emphasised by a dramatic but blunder-strewn day in London as the 2016 edition of the London Chess Classic got underway.
Levon Aronian would later call the first round the “most dangerous round”, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri perhaps wisely chose to get it over with quickly, playing a sharp Sicilian Najdorf that ended in a repetition on move 24. The surprise, perhaps, was that it was Giri who played the Najdorf against the leading modern proponent of the opening.
He was asked if he’d gotten any sleep as a new father:
Levon Aronian would later call the first round the “most dangerous round”, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri perhaps wisely chose to get it over with quickly, playing a sharp Sicilian Najdorf that ended in a repetition on move 24. The surprise, perhaps, was that it was Giri who played the Najdorf against the leading modern proponent of the opening.
He was asked if he’d gotten any sleep as a new father:
I did... I can’t say the same about my wife! I still got some time to check the Najdorf, fortunately. Maxime is the big Najdorf guy, so I thought let’s try and steal that title from him! Unfortunately I didn’t win, so I think he’s still got the title, but I’m growing…
Maxime told Maurice Ashley, “it’s never so easy to play against your pet opening”, and then revealed he’d only realised what he was in for on the morning of the game:
Today I expected Anish to go for e4 e5, then I suddenly looked and realised his last ten games with Black were Najdorfs, so that was a surprise.
No lasting damage was done, but it was Maxime who missed something and had to take a repetition while he still could.
Giri rubbed salt in Hikaru Nakamura’s wounds when he referred to Magnus Carlsen winning the World Championship on his birthday and concluded:
Giri rubbed salt in Hikaru Nakamura’s wounds when he referred to Magnus Carlsen winning the World Championship on his birthday and concluded:
Having a birthday is not an excuse to play badly. That excuse is gone. Hikaru will have to come up with another one!
Everything that could go wrong for Hikaru on his 29th birthday did, and it was an eerily familiar situation. In Round 1 of the Sinquefield Cup Hikaru blitzed out 16 moves of theory against Wesley So, forgot a move of his preparation and got ground into dust. He repeated that feat in London, but this time it took only 13 moves to cross the point of no return with 13.Ne2?
That move took 55 seconds, before he had 16 minutes to contemplate his life choices while Wesley So confirmed that 13…Nxe4! was indeed simply winning. Hikaru was able to win back the pawn, but at the expense of accepting a horribly crippled position.
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