Nakamura Reaches Lindores Abbey Semifinals
GM Hikaru Nakamura is the first player to reach the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge's semifinals after beating GM Levon Aronian again on Monday. GM Ding Liren leveled the score against Yu Yangyi and so these players will decide matters on Wednesday.
The games of the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge can be found here as part of our live events platform. GM Robert Hess and WFM Alexandra Botez are providing daily commentary on Nakamura's Twitch channel, embedded on Chess.com/TV.
Nakamura's play has been looking excellent so far, while Aronian's game has been missing the spark that we know from his best days.
With one match victory in the pocket, Nakamura chose a solid line against the Petroff in game one where, thanks to the bishop pair, White can play for two results. Aronian came close to equality, especially after cementing his knight on d5, but several inaccuracies followed that led to a loss.
After draws in games two and three, Aronian needed to win the last, and the armageddon, to stay in the competition. He switched to 1.e4 and got some chances, but Nakamura once again found too many strong moves to handle.
We'll see a third match on Wednesday between the two Chinese grandmasters as Ding managed to level the score today. That was all based on an excellent win in game one, where Yu as completely outplayed in a Queen's Gambit Accepted:
Also for this match we're skipping the draws in games two and three (see the game viewer below) and move straight to the critical fourth game. It was lovely to see a Two Knights at the top level, but it was not so lovely for Yu, who was getting crushed but got away with a mercy draw.
On Tuesday, we'll see the second matches for the other half of the field: GM Magnus Carlsen vs. GM Wesley So and GM Daniil Dubov vs. GM Sergey Karjakin, with Karjakin and So having to win on demand to force a third match, also on Wednesday.
If Carlsen beats So, he'll face Nakamura in the semifinal. "I think in the match we played I played extremely well, in the Magnus Carlsen Invitational. I feel like I'm playing better against him recently. I'm just gonna keep on trying to play well," Nakamura said about that prospective.
All games of day 6
The Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge runs May 19-June 3 on Chess24 in association with the Lindores Abbey Heritage Society. The prize fund is $150,000 with a first prize of $45,000. The time control is 15 minutes for all moves with a 10-second increment after each move. No draw offers are allowed before move 40.
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