American Chess Magazine - 08 Fall 2018

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After two years, at last a portrait of Hikaru Nakamura takes pride of place on the front cover of American Chess Magazine – and with full justification following his consecutive wins in Grand Chess Tour events held in Paris and Saint Louis over the summer. Indeed, when it comes to speed, we dare say that Nakamura even rivals NASCAR – albeit in the realms of rapid and blitz chess! Here, by means of a selection of annotated games from these tournaments, IM Venkat Saravanan endeavors to discover the reasons for Hikaru’s superiority over his principal rivals in this fast and furious form of chess which never fails to provide so much drama and excitement. Switching to the world of top class classical chess, we highlight Shakhriyar Mamedyarov’s spectacular tournament win in Biel, one and a half points ahead of World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Though this was a sensational result in itself, perhaps even more significant was Shakh’s new found maturity of play, so different from his former risky and adventurous style. The success of this fresh approach is amply reflected in the consistency of the Azerbaijani grandmaster’s latest results, which have propelled him to world No.3 in the live ratings. Also over the summer, Saint Louis hosted another edition of its traditional Sinquefield Cup, where the crème de la crème of world chess was gathered together to do battle for big time prestige – and big time pay! After ten days of fierce fighting, for the first time in its history, three players, Levon Aronian, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, finished ‘in Sinque’ at the head of the tournament table and by mutual agreement reconciled themselves to sharing the honor of first place. Local resident and regular US Women’s Olympic Team member, WGM Tatev Abrahamyan, presents a round by round ringside report, supported by additional contributions from GMs Mihail Marin, Evgeny Miroshnichenko and Alex Ipatov.