Titled Tuesday : HIKARU Tactics !!

GM Hikaru Nakamura (@Hikaru)  is on a roll.

He just won the Late Titled Tuesday April 12 2022 once again. I was not participating nor watching the action but caught up with the commentary and a few games this evening. Thanks YouTube !

Hikaru doesn't rely on deep opening prep but tends to outplay his opponents by a combination of fast play and great accuracy for blitz games (3 minutes + 1 sec).

In the middlegame, his calculation skills and his tactics training (which he performs on stream) pay off, even against very strong GMs

Let's present a few winning tactics all played in the last 2 days online by @Hikaru.

Let's warm up with an easy one against Bortnyk, a strong GM in Blitz.

White to play and win

You can play the moves on the board, or click ? for the quiz solution

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Position 2

@Hikaru plays the black pieces. The game only lasted 2 moves from the position below.

Black to play

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@Hikaru dominates rapid chess (RCC on saturday) and blitz (Titled Tuesdays !)

Position 3

@Hikaru plays against GM Zhigalko with the Black pieces

There's only 1 good first move followed by another strong move.

Can you find the winning path for Black ?

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Position 4

@Hikaru is facing GM Fabiano Caruana

Caruana is currently #4 in the world (classical chess ) and also a candidate like @Hikaru.

Can you find the strongest move in the next position ?

White to play

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Now I can show the rest of the game

between @Hikaru and @FabianoCaruana

The first move 41.Ne4! was key in @Hikaru 's win , since it threatened the rook on d6 and a nasty fork+check on f6. But 41.Nf6+ doesn't work : 41..Rxf6 42 Qxf6 Qxg4! the white rook on g4 was hanging. 

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 Top 5 players  for the Late Titled Tuesday April 12 2022

@Hikaru scored 10 out of 11 points !

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For those who enjoy chess streamers.

The last round featured IM Levy Rozman @GothamChess

vs Danya GM @DanielNaroditsky

Black won. The game may end up on YouTube, this makes for great video "Content"

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/8oWqgEHw4

Any comments/feedback welcome !