World Championship 2016 - Games 3-4 Critical Moves

deepkimo

Updated: Nov 22, 2016, 1:06 AM | 0

Games 3 and 4 of the Carlsen-Karjakin 2016 World Championship were more exciting than the first two games, but still ended in draws. In both games, Carlsen reached a winning endgame but couldn't convert after a long and strong defense by Karjakin. We will look at the critical moves where Magnus missed his winning chances.

In game 3, Carlsen won a pawn after a few inaccurate moves by Karjakin. Then a sequence of mistakes by both sides followed, the last was in the following position at move 71: Carlsen with white had a chance to play Rf7+ followed by Rf2 stopping the h-pawn, but instead he played Rb7 and gave Karjakin a chance for an amazing plan of playing Ra1 and giving the b-pawn, then saving the game by advancing h-pawn.

In game 4, Carlsen with black got the bishop pair advantage into the endgame. In the following position at move 45, he played the obvious f4 creating a strong connected passed pawn, and followed by moving his king around to b3. Surprisingly, Karjakin was able to defend this position, creating a fortress and no progress could have been made by black. Instead, Be6 would have given Carlsen winning chances.

For the complete games and more analysis, several videos are posted.

In the next post, we will look at the following championship games critical moves. If you would like to get notified about future posts, please subscribe here.