Hikaru Nakamura, streamer extraordinaire and world quantity two, didn’t make it previous the spherical 4 within the FIDE World Cup as 18-year-old Indian phenom Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa defeated him in back-to-back video games within the first tiebreaker spherical on Aug. 11.
After two attracts within the classical video games, the sequence between the 2 grandmasters progressed to tiebreakers with sooner time management. Similar to of their two classical video games, the gamers went into a well known tactical line of the King’s English Opening, however this explicit sideline shortly led to a venomous affair, the place a typical piece sacrifice by White didn’t work out due to the transfer order and the bishop’s placement.
9 strikes in, the gamers entered a model new place, one the place Nakamura was already in vital bother, together with his knight trapped on h4 and missing the compensation wanted to make issues work.
Quickly after, the knight fell, and regardless of Nakamura’s greatest efforts to complicate affairs, he misplaced the primary sport in decisive trend, needing a win with the Black items in sport two to power an additional tiebreaker.
As is commonplace in conditions like this, the American went for a barely doubtful and double-edged opening within the type of the Pirc Protection, however in a bid to maintain items on the board and keep problems for a attainable win, he ended up in a woeful place and a surprising tactical sequence after transfer 26 left Pragg with an additional bishop. Although Nakamura performed for some time longer out of frustration, the consequence was by no means unsure from that time on.
The relentless nature of the knockout bracket within the 2023 Chess World Cup has already claimed many super-grandmaster victims, with Anish Giri, Wesley So, Teimour Radjabov, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov already eradicated within the early rounds.
On the time of writing, Vincent Keymer has simply survived Magnus Carlsen’s onslaught within the first tiebreaker sequence, pushing the sequence to 2 10+10 matches.
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