Fabiano Caruana got off to a fine start this week at the Norway Chess elite event in Stavanger, where the US champion defeated Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, in the opening round and was a clear leader after three of the nine rounds.
Carlsen, in contrast, trails in eighth place, despite scoring after replays in his next two games against Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura. The Norwegian has won Stavanger for four years in a row, so it is too early to discount his recovery chances, but with only six rounds left his task is already difficult.
It was Carlsen’s first classical defeat against Caruana since 2015, a period which included their 2018 world title match in London where all 12 classical games were drawn.
Carlsen’s opening choice as Black, the French Defence 1 e4 e6, was intended as a surprise, but Caruana still recalled that at Black’s 13th Qb5! was the right choice rather than Qa5+, which gave a position where White’s knights were active. Carlsen could still have held a draw as late as move 31 by exchanging knights at f4, but he missed 31…Rc3? 32 Nd7! and soon resigned in the face of a white rook on the seventh rank.
In a nine-round elite tournament, recovery for Carlsen will be hard, but he made a good start on Wednesday and Thursday by defeating his old rivals So and Nakamura in Armageddon replays after draws in the classical games. Nakamura tried the King’s Gambit 1 e4 e5 2 f4, but it was Carlsen who developed a winning attack.
Although Stavanger is listed as a classical tournament, its unique and extreme time controls, its scoring system and its drawn game replay rules make it different from any other major event. The time limit is 40 moves in two hours, but there is no per-move increment until move 41, after which the game continues at 10 seconds per move until the finish.
A win in a classical game counts three points and a loss zero, while draws, which can be agreed after move 30, are replayed on the same day under Armageddon rules. White has 10 minutes on the clock and Black seven minutes, with a one second per-move increment from move 41. An Armageddon win counts 1.5 points and an Armageddon loss one point.
The upshot is that the players have to perform the difficult mental feat of switching from a classical to a blitz mode after a short interval, or even within the same game. Arguably, the Stavanger rules favour Carlsen, who has long advocated faster or mixed time limits, even for world championship matches.
After Thursday’s third round the Stavanger scores were Caruana (US) 7.5, Alireza Firouzja (France) 6, Nakamura (US) 5, Dommaraju Gukesh (India) 4.5, Anish Giri (Netherlands) and Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) 4, So (US) 3.5, Carlsen (Norway) 3, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) 2.5, Aryan Tari (Norway) 1.
Firouzja, the 19-year-old world No 2, won a fine game in round three and at this early stage is looking Caruana’s most dangerous rival.
Michael Adams, the former world No 4, won last weekend’s English Championship at Kenilworth, Warwickshire, with 6/7, half a point ahead of IM Marcus Harvey and IM Matthew Wadsworth. It was not the smoothest of victories for the Cornish grandmaster, as Stanley Badacsonyi, 13, should have drawn in round one, while IM Jonah Willow missed a possible winning chance in the final round, but Adams’s class showed in his key victory against the second seed IM Ameet Ghasi.
Several teenagers did well, while the youngest entrant Kushal Jakhria, eight, again impressed with 3.5/7, winning a best performance prize. Jakhria is ranked world No 1 for his age in the June Fide rating list, and even this is out of date. His latest results, at the Menorca Open and at Kenilworth, have been around 2200 master level.
Looking ahead for possible future targets, an Argentinian talent, Faustino Oro, has just set a new world record for the youngest ever 2300 Fide rating, at nine years seven months. The record for the youngest 2400 Fide rating is held by Abdusattorov, who achieved it at 10 years five months, a year after the Uzbek defeated two grandmasters at the Agzamov Memorial in Tashkent.
England’s pre-teen talent Bodhana Sivanandan, eight, continues to be world No 1 girl for her age. She scored 4/7 in the women’s championship, and recently gave her first simultaneous exhibition.
The English Women’s Championship at Kenilworth went to the top seed and the only woman GM in the field, Katarzyna Toma, with 5.5/7. That was after a bizarre second round mishap where Toma fell into an unlikely one-move checkmate. Toma fought back strongly in the later rounds, and won a critical final-round battle against Zoe Varney, who was then leading by half a point.
Varney, who placed second on tiebreak, defeated her three closest rivals and had an excellent tournament with a 2142 performance. The Durham University graduate, 23, who is coached by GM Danny Gormally, made her England Olympiad debut at Chennai last year and looks ready to compete for WFM and WIM titles.
The English Championships are a recent innovation, and their popularity shows that there is a market for a weekend version of the national championship in addition or as an alternative to the traditional week-long event in July. The event could be stronger, though. Only four of the top 20 England players on the men’s Fide list took part.
3870: 1 Rxd5! cxd5 2 Qf8+ Kh7 3 Ne8! (threats 4 Qxg7 mate and 4 Nf6 mate) Qe7 4 Nf6+ Qxf6 5 Qxf6 wins. 1 Qxh6+ Kg8 2 Rb2! Nb4 3 Qf4! also wins, but is slower.
