Caruana Wins the Showdown in St. Louis, Hou Wins the Undercard
Slightly old news, yes, but compensation is forthcoming. From Friday the 12th through Monday the 15th of this month the top two players in the U.S., world #5 Hikaru Nakamura and world #6 Fabiano Caruana faced off in a four day, four stage match called The Showdown in St. Louis for a hefty prize fund. ($60k for the winner, $40k for the "loser".)
Day 1 saw them play a Basque match, i.e. a two-board simul against each other. Those games were played with a classical time control, and while Caruana had good winning chances in both Nakamura managed to hold the draw in each case.
Day 2 was the best day of the event for Nakamura, who won the Chess960 games (played at a rapid time control) by a 2.5-1.5 score. He lost the first game, won the next two and finished with a draw. All the games in the match were weighted equally, so after two days Nakamura led 3.5-2.5.
Day 3 was what Jennifer Shahade aptly called "rapid rapid" - game 15'+10" - and in this stage Caruana took over. Nakamura was winning the first game, but by the end was fortunate to draw. Caruana won the second game when Nakamura made an astounding, beginner's error in the opening of game two. The next two games were similar: Nakamura was very close to winning game three, which was eventually drawn, while Caruana won another (relatively) clean game in round 4 to close out the day with a 3-1 lead in the stage and a 5.5-4.5 overall lead.
Day 4 saw the players go at it in an eight-game blitz match, and while one would normally expect Nakamura to be the favorite it was Caruana who dominated. There were lots of errors, as you'd expect from a blitz match - especially on day four of a tough event - and Caruana won the stage with a 4.5-3.5 victory that included a last-round loss from what had been an equal-to-better position almost throughout. Te final match score was 10-8 in Caruana's favor.
In the undercard, Parimarjan Negi and Hou Yifan played the same schedule against each other, and Hou Yifan was the dominant victor, winning by an 11-7 score. That's even more impressive, considering she lost both of the Basque games on day 1, but after that she steamrolled Negi, winning the Chess960 3.5-.5 (Negi drew the fourth game), the rapid 3-1 (Negi won game 2), and the blitz 4.5-3.5. Hou earned $30k, Negi $20k.
The latter match was quite entertaining, and certainly of greater theoretical interest as the players went after each other in one Sicilian after another. However, and possibly unfortunately, I've undertaken to offer comments to all 14 of the orthodox chess games (for one thing, I couldn't find the Chess960 games) in the Caruana-Nakamura contest, and you can replay them all here.
Reader Comments (1)
The Chess960 games can be found on Chessbomb. I haven't been able to find a PGN of it anywhere, but at least the games are available online.