Fabiano Caruana rises to No7 in world rankings after Moscow Aeroflot
Leonard Barden
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 February 2012 18.02 EST
Fabiano Caruana is the hot performer in world chess. The 19-year-old Italian has surged up the ratings in the past two months and has reached the top 10 elite with second prize at Reggio followed by tied second at Wijk aan Zee, this time level with the world No1 Magnus Carlsen, and behind only the world No2 Levon Aronian.
Most of the grandmasters who competed at Wijk and Gibraltar earlier in February opted to miss this week’s Aeroflot Moscow open. After the tough earlier contests, they baulked at facing the massed ranks of little-known Russian and east European GMs who traditionally make Aeroflot hard for westerners.
Caruana was eager to extend his winning streak and his decision to take part at Moscow looked good when he began with 4.5/6, half a point off the lead. That score also propelled him to No7 in the world rankings, and sparked a glowing article and interview with the young Italian on the ChessBase website the next morning. Perhaps Caruana read it before his fateful round seven game below, when he crashed in a miniature of only 22 moves.
What happened? Caruana is a strategist who plays many long games, while the opening was a sleepy Slav Defence. But then Poland’s Mateusz Bartel, playing White, unbalanced the position by his Nh4xg6 plan. This gave Caruana the idea of an attack on White’s castled king by using his rook on the h file.
The concept was good, its execution a disaster as Caruana blew his position with two weak moves, The direct 14…g5! 15 e4 g4 instead of Kf8? gives Black an attack while four moves later 18…Nbd5 is solid where Black’s Nxe4? set up White’s winning sequence.
Full article here.
He deserves it.