Nakamura beats Nisipeanu in second round Kings Tournament
Hikaru Nakamura bounced back with a win in the second round of the Kings Tournament in Medias, Romania. The American grandmaster defeated Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu in a game that lasted 78 moves and started as a Closed Ruy Lopez. First-round winners Magnus Carlsen and Vassily Ivanchuk drew their game, also a Ruy Lopez, while Teimour Radjabov and Sergey Karjakin also split the point, after 90 moves of quiet manoeuvring.General info
The Kings Tournament takes place June 11-21 at the Natural Gas Documentation and Information Centre in Medias, Romania. Magnus Carlsen, Vassily Ivanchuk, Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, Teimour Radjabov and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu play a double round-robin with one rest day after five rounds. Games start 15.30 local time (14.30 CET).
Round 2
The second round saw the two leaders face each other: Vassily Ivanchuk had the white pieces against Magnus Carlsen. In order to keep queens on the board and thus more fighting resources, the Ukrainian chose to avoid the Berlin Defence with 4.d3, only to enter in another kind of position where there was very little White could do to improve his position. A draw on move 33 was a natural outcome.Teimour Radjabov got a pleasant advantage on the white side of the Slav Defense and was pressing Sergey Karjakin’s position. The Russian grandmaster defended well in a game that saw king runs to the queenside and back from both sides. In the end the draw was agreed in a pawn endgame on move 78.The only decisive game of the round saw a very tense battle between Hikaru Nakamura and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. The Romanian surprised his opponent by playing a line which Nakamura used to play himself. Both players did their best and showed high-quality chess. The position was balanced for a long time, until the Romanian grandmaster made a few inaccuracies and then blundered in time-trouble in the endgame.This time, in the video section there are post-game chats about all three games:Videos
Games round 2 - notes by GM Dorian Rogozenco
Game viewer by ChessTempo
Kings Tournament 2011 | Round 2 standings
Link
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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