R2 Candidates: Nakamura beat Radjabov, Rapport missed his chance with Firouzja
Round 2 of the 2022 Candidates Tournament ended with Nakamura winning against Radjabov – the only decisive game of the day -, while Rapport missed a huge chance with Firouzja.
Round 2
The day started with a birthday boy! GM Alireza Firouzja turns 19 today and he has many achievements to celebrate including that he is the youngest player in 2022 Candidates and the 3rd youngest in the history of chess.
Round 2 started with the event sponsor Isai Scheinberg making the ceremonial first move today in the game between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana.
Richard Rapport-Alireza Firouzja
Richard Rapport tried the Maroczy Bind setup against Firouzja’s Sicilian, creating a position remarkably similar to his game of yesterday, but in the opposite color!
The two GMs quickly moved to an equal endgame with many pieces which converted to a winning rook endgame for Rapport. “Rapport’s understanding of the endgames is brilliant” GM Daniil Yuffa mentioned during the broadcast.
Alireza sacrificed a pawn for activity but Rapport doubled his rooks on the 7th rank to make it even more unpleasant for the 19-year-old GM. The engines were constantly moving from totally winning for Rapport to totally equal, with the commentators highlighting how complicated it is to understand and act on that kind of endgames.
Eventually, Rapport failed to exploit the position which ended in a theoretical draw.
Hikaru Nakamura-Teimour Radjabov
Another Berlin for Nakamura who blitzed out his opening preparation using 4 minutes, while Radjabov had used 50 for the first 10 moves! After a quick transition to an equal endgame, Radjabov made an inaccuracy that immediately caught Nakamura’s attention.
Radjabov made his last 40th move with 2 seconds left on his clock and reached the time control, while a pawn down and with a difficult position to defend. After building up his advantage for almost 7 long hours, the American GM finally won a complicated endgame with passing pawns for both sides.
Ian Nepomniachtchi – Fabiano Caruana
The clash of leaders, Nepo vs Caruana, was definitely the most anticipated game of the day which turned into the most interesting one.
Thanks to deep preparation, Caruana had a 54-minute time advantage when Nepo played his 17th move, which soon changed after a pawn sacrifice by the Russian.
With two pawn ups, Caruana couldn’t find a way to gain advantage due to white’s solid compensation. After a thriller game, the two former Challengers made a draw by repetition.
Jan-Krzysztof Duda-Ding Liren
The first result of Round 2 was Duda-Ding Liren. It was an intense Italian game, which had more to give according to GM Daniil Yuffa, but ended in a draw by repetition!
“I am not very satisfied with this game, to be honest. I prepared an opening idea which did not give me any objective advantage but I hoped to get a playable position. [...] But I was not feeling very comfortable and basically did not know what to do.” Duda said after the game.
Join our broadcast with GM Daniil Yuffa and IM/WGM Elizabeth Paehtz, tomorrow at 13:00 UTC.
Round 3 Pairings:
Ding Liren – Richard Rapport
Fabiano Caruana – Jan-Krzysztof Duda
Teimour Radjabov – Ian Nepomniachtchi
Alireza Firouzja – Hikaru Nakamura
