Learning from Hikaru

There are many ways to improve and enjoy chess, but of course going over recent games is an excellent way to do so.

There has been the recent chess olympiad, and chess.com organizes top events every week ( Swiss Rapid and Titled Tuesdays). Of course there are summer opens as well as other sites ( lichess, chess24) so many games to choose from.

I am selecting the recent Aug 9th Titled Tuesday

https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/early-titled-tuesday-blitz-august-09-2022-3291600

and selecting @hikaru games

Why Hikaru Nakamura ? in this tournament he finishes 2nd but he has the most Titled Tuesdays wins ( and I'd say Andreikin is 2nd in terms of consistency , always in contention) .

2nd reason:  Hikaru streams Titled Tuesdays and explains his thought process while he plays. He really goes over variations,themes move by move !

He also goes over the key moments right after and is transparent, whether he had a bad position or where his opponents go wrong. He quickly checks with the chess.com engine after the game to see what he misses. something I do too !

so while there are tons of GM games, it is very nice to see Hikaru streaming live while trying to win his games. I suppose he would be even more dominant if he were not to stream, but amazingly he maintains a very high level while streaming the games. only Daniel Naroditsky can do this ( maybe Bortnyk as well but I do not watch his stream)

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Here Hikaru is Black. 

White has a tough decision. What would you do with White ?

 By the way Hikaru likes to exchange the bishop on g2 when White goes for 1c4 and 2 g3 or 1 Nf3,2g3. Think of the sicilian dragon where White goes Be3-Qd2-0-0-0 and Bh6. Hikaru does a similar thing with Black if White fianchettoes the bishop by doing g2-g3 and Bg2.

White went Nxc7? and its a mistake. 11Nxf6+ was equal 11Bxh3 was bad, 11hxg5 was good for White.

I am putting all the key variations in the next diagram to explain why.

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in the next position, Hikaru is White and builds an advantage early on.

But how can you increase your edge here, White to play ?

White to play

There are actually multiple moves possible

in the game, Hikaru played 20b4! and then bxc5 with large advantage. He commented live he could have also started with 20Nxc5! ( because you can exchange everything on c5 and then finish with Bxb7! winning rook on a8.

Here's the position after 20b4! with arrows (@Hikaru would approve the use of arrows I think !)

Let me put the variations and the game here

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Titled Tuesdays are very competitive. Therefore Hikaru is facing at least 3 or 4 very strong GMs each tournament. [I have played in Titled Tuesday and I can attest the level is sky high, I think my best placement was #105 and I often lose rating points in the process. But I get to play strong GMs like Aman Hambleton, Jospem, Kosteniuk, Goryaschkina and IMs as well such as Levy Rozman]

So now lets see the battle between Dubov and Hikaru. Dubov is ranked #39 in the world in classical chess.

Hikaru is Black. there is no forced win in the next position but what would you play as Black ?

This seems a balanced position. So to win against a player like Dubov, Hikaru needs to create chances where White could go wrong. 

and here, he played h6-h5!? to open up the h-file. 

I would say the black pieces are more active and Black has a plan, to open the h-file. But this is far from winning. lets fast forward several moves later.

Black has opened up the h-file. But White has managed to trade a pair of rook and has centralized the pieces. At this stage, the eval is around equal but Hikaru puts a bit of pressure on the clock as well.

Let's go to a key moment. Once again, there is no forced win, but how do you create problems for your opponent ? Hikaru is one of the best at doing this. 

Black to play

and here, Black went for ..Rf6!? attacking the queen.

Now the key is that if White plays 35.Qh4, Black can give a check on f3, but later on White can play g3-g4 to defend the f2 pawn. 

The main weakness for White is the f2 pawn.

position after ..Rf6

But in the game White went with 35.Qg4 and Black managed to win the f2 pawn and the game.

Heres' the end of the game

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in the next game, Hikaru went for his favorite system 1 Nf3 followed by 2 b3

but here I do not want to focus on the opening ( please contact me if you are interested in this as I have analyzed this in details and can share my analysis and key ideas of this dangerous system )

I want to focus on how to convert the advantage into a winning position. Hikaru was facing @Jospem a dangerous GM in blitz which I have played before ( and lost to).

White to play. How did Hikaru convert his edge ?

and now I will offer the variations and solutions below

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the first move was Nd7! which involves calculating several variations. but Hikaru spotted the win quickly while streaming live the game !

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Hikaru played really well but stumbled against Gata Kamsky. Gata's level was incredibly high in that game with the Black pieces.

its a very instructive game and I have annotated it as well.

so in the end Hikaru  drew Andreikin in Round 11, and scored 9.5/11 which was good enough for 2nd place !