Things are finally heating up in the American Cup as Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura face off for the second time to take the crown. Fabiano lost their first matchup this tournament in the blitz portion after drawing the two classical games, only to convincingly beat Levon three games to one in the losers bracket to challenge Hikaru for a rematch. Hikaru won the first game, and the rest of the match hadn’t been played as of the time of writing.
It’s a huge result for a player who has considered retiring recently, following a less-than-stellar performance in the Freestyle Grand he played a few weeks ago, where he lost several winning positions against Javokhir Sindarov. Nakamura is the consensus world No. 2, but he’s also nearing 40, and it’s difficult to be a top-tier chess player as you age. The game favors the young, and while Nakamura and World No. 1 Carlsen’s dominance has pretty much stifled any of the younger players who came of age while they were at their peaks, the new generation of insanely talented chess players seems to have that top two in their sight.
Losing Nakamura to retirement would be a huge loss for competitive chess. But he’s still playing in incredible form, and a great blitz and rapid player, which means tournaments like this favor him significantly. He’s finally got his head back over 2800 Elo recently, which makes him and Carlsen the only two players above that milestone. In third is Gukesh D, the current world champion, and the leader of a new generation of prodigious Indian players who are taking professional chess by storm.
Meanwhile, Caruana is one of the best players in the world and held the No. 2 position for months. Caruana almost reached Carlsen’s rating, peaking at 2,851, but has proceeded to tumble down from there to below 2,775, a rating that has not been helped by some exceedingly poor performances at tournaments in the last calendar year. Fabiano has already automatically qualified for the Candidates tournament, which means he will have a shot at playing for the World Championship this year, and he’s still capable of masterly play. It’s just been a bit of a slump for one of the best-prepped players of our generation.
This means that the Grand Finals of the American Cup might be a preview of what the Candidates look like, as Nakamura seems likely to pick up a spot for the tournament, and we might see another round of Caruana-Nakamura for the most prestigious title chess has to offer.
The Loser’s Bracket for this tournament has definitely been its own interesting little experience. Levon Aronian, one of the greatest players of all time, has been steamrolling several players before losing to Fabi, taking down Sam Sevian and Leinier Dominguez, other players who have set up shop in the U.S. and have been taking down tournaments. Meanwhile, Abhimanyu Mishra, a 16 year-old, lost out after tying initially with Nakamura, losing to Wesley So 1.5-0.5. It’s still an incredibly strong showing for the future of American chess.
In the Women’s tournament, GM Tatev Abrahamyan went up one game against 16 year-old prodigy Alice Lee. Abrahamyan got there by beating Irina Krush in the loser’s bracket, one of my favorite players of all time (and responsible for the most interesting move of the Kasparov vs the World game), and she seems in great shape to take down the entire tournament. Honestly, the Women’s Cup has been way more interesting than the Open this year, considering every single damn game in the Open just about drew.
Go play some chess. It’s a lot of fun.
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