Gashimov Memorial, Round 6: Carlsen Bounces Back to Reclaim A Share of the Lead
The rest day may have been just what Magnus Carlsen needed, as he commenced the second cycle of the Vugar Gashimov Memorial by defeating Shakhriyar Mamedyarov for the second time in the tournament. This broke his two-game losing streak and brought him into shared first with Teimour Radjabov after the latter drew against Sergey Karjakin. (Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura also drew their game.)
The Mamedyarov-Carlsen game was complicated and there were all sorts of differing opinions on what was going on. Mamedyarov's 5.Nf3 (after 4.Qc2 d5 in the Nimzo-Indian) was very rare and a surprise to Carlsen. Jan Gustafsson was entirely unimpressed by this idea commentating on chess24 and thought Carlsen was better throughout; the only question was how much. Mamedyarov was very happy with his position up until he played 22.f5; that was inaccurate and his few succeeding moves included even more serious errors. He correctly felt that 22.Re1 would have been better, but if I understood him correctly he seemed to think he would have had the better chances then. And then there's Houdini, which agrees in part and disagrees in part with both Gustafsson and Mamedyarov. It evaluates the position in the short-term aftermath of 5.Nf3 as at least very slightly better for White, but soon enough Carlsen obtains an edge - one he would have kept even after the better 22.Re1.
To interject based on my own study and experience (admittedly and obviously at a considerably lower level than Carlsen's and Mamedyarov's) I would say that positions where Black plays ...dxc4 and holds the extra pawn while White gets a d4 + e4 pawn center in return are some of the hardest to play in all of chess. They come up in various Slavs, Semi-Slavs, Triangle Systems and even, as here, in openings like the Nimzo-Indian. I even noticed that there were some openings where I handled the structure and the resulting positions pretty well, while there were others where I was relatively clueless. So I'm at least not so surprised by the differences of opinion, and I won't even go so far as to say that Houdini's evaluation was correct. I think the line needs more tests before stable evaluations can be offered.
On to tomorrow's round. Here are the round 7 Pairings, with player scores in parentheses:
- Radjabov (3.5) - Mamedyarov (2)
- Karjakin (3) - Caruana (3)
- Nakamura (3) - Carlsen (3.5)
Reader Comments (3)
Frodo and Sauron aside, here is another opportunity for Nakamura to prove rather than eat his words regarding Carlsen.
Will he challenge Carlsen with another 4.f3 versus the Nimzo? Will Carlsen use the ...Nh5 "system" again?
Decades ago when Fischer was Geller's "customer", it was said that in order to defeat Geller Fischer must impose a hard positional game.
Years ago in reference to Nakamura, Carlsen said that there are four or five people in the world with chess understanding and I am one of the them. At the time I thought those four or five would be Anand, Aronian, Carlsen, Kasparov, and Kramnik.
The point is (in my opinion) Nakamura must "outCarlsen" Carlsen to defeat the current WCC and the player rated number one.
"positions where Black plays ...dxc4 and holds the extra pawn while White gets a d4 + e4 pawn center in return are some of the hardest to play in all of chess"
It's my hypothesis (based on a statistic population of 2) that you can do worse than study and play the King's Gambit (with ...g5) before you try to understand these positions). Anyhow this stuff was for me one important reason to switch from 1.e4 to 1.d4 several years ago.
Does this pawn structure have a name? Do you know of any good study materials for it?
[DM: I don't think it has a name, but it most commonly arises in some sharp Semi-Slav lines (e.g. the Botvinnik System and the Anti-Moscow Gambit). As noted earlier, in recounting my experience with it, there really isn't a one-size fits all approach to the structure. In some instances I knew what I was doing with Black, in Opening A, while in Opening B I'd consistently misplay the position.
If you want to learn it, look at games in the openings where it arises, and try to grasp the plans relevant to each particular variation. It's also important to examine all the pawn breaks. (E.g. a4, b3 and d5 for White, plus e5 - even though it isn't technically a pawn break. For Black one must consider ...c5 and ...b4 {whether together or separately} and sometimes ...e5. Black must also evaluate when and whether to return the extra pawn for other benefits. It's just a very complicated structure, and when it's one of those Semi-Slav lines the presence of a Black pawn on g5 only adds to the complexity.)]