Carlsen and Nakamura Win Strong Chess Events
Posted: 02/13/2015 6:31 pm EST Updated: 02/13/2015 7:59 pm EST
Lubomir Kavalek
International Chess Grandmaster
The year 2015 is very young and the world chess champion Magnus Carlsen has already won two strong tournaments — in Wijk aan Zee in January and in the German resort Baden-Baden this week. But first, let’s go briefly to Gibraltar, where the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was tearing the competition apart this month.
The United States have two chess players rated in the world’s top 10 and they intend to push each other to get even better. Nakamura’s fighting spirit didn’t allow him to leave Wesley So’s recent rating advance unanswered. He went to Gibraltar, where he won in 2008, and began to win game after game.
Already in the first game against the Serbian woman grandmaster Jovana Vojinovic, he did something unusual. Starting with the third move, he moved his queen on six consecutive moves. Nakamura would have been a hero some five centuries ago, around 1485, when the chess queen ceased to be a mere adviser to the king and acquired additional powers.
“That’s what the fans want,” exclaimed Hikaru, but the fans were utterly confused. “Don’t move one piece too often in the opening,” was one of the rules they read in chess manuals. Hikaru threw the rules out the window.
Full article here.