Aronian meets Nakamura in first round of Tata Steel

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74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2012 (1)

Aronian meets Nakamura in first round of Tata Steel

IM Malcolm Pein - Monday 16th January 2012

IM Malcolm Pein looks at Vassily Ivanchuk's loss to Fabiano Caruana from Reggio and briefly reports on the first round of the Tata Steel tournament.

Vassily Ivanchuk. Photo ©

Vassily Ivanchuk. Photo © | http://www.tatasteelchess.com

The 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament first round pairings pitted defending champion Hikaru Nakamura against the mercurial chess genius Vassily Ivanchuk. Both players had horrible losing streaks at Reggio Emilia earlier this month. Nakamura lost three in a row, the last of which was to Ivanchuk who had earlier lost four successive games. That reverse was in the last round and cost the American first prize, so he can take his revenge with colours reversed in his next competitive game, just eight days later.

Perhaps Ivanchuk's worst game at Reggio was against Fabiano Caruana, who also plays at Tata Steel. It was the fourth successive defeat. 'Chuky' plays a passive version of the London System and at the end, gives up all his pieces and resigns although the position was hopeless by then.

V Ivanchuk - F Caruana

54th Reggio Emilia

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bf4 Bg7 4.e3 d6 5.h3 0-0 6.Be2 b6 7.0-0 Bb7 8.c3 Nbd7 9.Bh2 Qe8 10.a4 a6 11.Na3

The unorthodox development is designed to keep the d2 square free for the Nf3

11...e5 12.Nc4 Ne4 13.Nfd2 Nxd2 14.Nxd2 Kh8 15.Qc2 f5 16.Rfe1 g5 17.Bd3 Qg6

Black is already doing well, his kingside play is underway with no disturbance on the other wing as yet

18.f3 Rae8 19.Rf1 d5 20.a5 c5! 21.g4

Black is taking over the board unless White does something but this exposes the king

21...e4! 22.fxe4 dxe4 23.Be2 f4!

Fabiano Caruana