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Sunday, February 2, 2014

Zurich Chess Challenge 2014 Round 3: Nakamura Misses Win, Loses to Carlsen

Chess Blog for Daily Chess News and Trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2014

Hello everyone,

Thousands of chess fans spent Saturday night getting more than their money's worth watching Round 3 at the Zurich Chess Challenge 2014. World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen headed straight into a "sure shot" loss versus Hikaru Nakamura when the American Grandmaster crumbled in an inexplicable manner and went on to lose the game. Magnus Carlsen pulled off a win from what would have normally been a loss. Norwegian fans were pleased as punch, no doubt. 


World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen before his game with Hikaru Nakamura. Photo: Maria Emelianova

With his victory, the Norwegian World Chess Champion is now in sole lead at the Zurich Chess Challenge 2014. But the 23-year old Magnus Carlsen was not entirely happy about his victory. The US-American Hikaru Nakamura missed in the highly tactical melee a subtle winning move and went on, after some more inaccurate moves, to even lose the game.

The decisive position after 36. ... Qg6 (left), as commentator Werner Hug said, will find it's way into the books. And co-commentator Peter Leko added that the correct move 37. Qf1 was not easy to find, even when a diagram was pointing out that this was a winning position.

Meanwhile, Viswanathan Anand earned his first point by a draw against Fabiano Caruana. They both didn't know exactly which of them had the better position and therefore a better chance for a win. The first Rapid Game was played between Levon Aronian and Boris Gelfand because they didn't reach move 40 in their game. The Armenian won this Show Game with the black pieces convincingly.

Standings Round 3 (Win is 2 points, Draw is 1 point)1 Magnus Carlsen (2872) 

2 Levon Aronian (2812) 4
3 Hikaru Nakamura (2789) 3
4 Fabiano Caruana (2782) 3
5 Boris Gelfand (2777) 2
6 Viswanathan Anand (2773) 1



Replay all the games of Round 3 at the Zurich Chess Challenge 2014 with Chess King. 

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