Carlsen Goes Down Against Caruana in Shamkir | Update: VIDEO

The Shamkir Chess 2014 tournament is all open again as Fabiano Caruana defeated tournament leader Magnus Carlsen from the white side of a Berlin Ending. The Italian grandmaster was pressing from the start and was then helped by his opponent, who blundered a pawn. The position remained complicated but Caruana managed to win with his passed pawns without getting checkmated. Both Karjakin-Mamedyarov and Radjabov-Nakamura were drawn. In group B Guseinov beat Durarbaily as Black, Mamedov won against Wang Hao and Wojtaszek beat Safarli.

The fourth round of the Shamkir Chess tournament in memory of Vugar Gashimov started with a draw between Sergey Karjakin and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov which took slightly less than two hours. That was a bit of a pity, since the players certainly reached the most interesting position out of the opening from the three A group games.

Update: video report on Caruana-Carlsen

Despite his loss in that opening the other day, Mamedyarov played the Caro-Kann again. Karjakin: “I didn't expect him to go for this line again after his game with Hikaru. I didn't really prepare for this as I had a very long game yesterday but I just remembered that I had an old idea to play this g4,f4, f5, then Be3 and then I remembered it's not easy for Black to find all the correct moves. So I wasn't 'empty' for this game but my idea wasn't enough to get any advantage so a draw was a reasonable result.”

Karjakin also had some nice words for his opponent at the press conference: “I think Shakh started in the Candidates with two losses in the first three games. I was and I am still completely sure that Shakh will show his best in this tournament so that's why he is very dangerous!” he smiled.

But again most chess fans were looking at one game in particular: that of Magnus Carlsen. As the tournament leader and fresh world champion he simply plays the “key game” of the round almost every day. And today, for the first time, things didn't go so well, right from the start.

Thanks to good preparation in the Berlin Ending (which Caruana rarely answers with 4.d3) White had a small edge, and it was clear that he was going to keep it for a while. And then suddenly Carlsen missed a not that difficult tactic that dropped a pawn, and Caruana managed to convert it.

Carlsen described his mood as “indifferent all day”.

“Today I felt from the morning that it's a bad day, I'm not feeling well. Then it's tough against such a good opponent. Maybe I should have played something different in the opening because it's not such a good idea to play like this when you're not in such an inspired mood,“ said Carlsen.

To the typical sports question “how do you feel”, Caruana replied: “In general I like to win and it's also nice to win against Magnus. I don't mind it, you know!”

Caruana also revealed that both he and Hikaru Nakamura are going to play for Padova at the European Club Cup. Quite an interesting bit of news, but unfortunately the journalists were then summoned to "only ask questions about the tournament".

Caruana's new team member played a long and tough draw with Teimour Radjabov. It was all pretty balanced until around move 35, but soon after he traded one pair of rooks Nakamura realized that the rook ending was actually rather difficult for Black. He eventually managed to reach the famous Vancura position… without knowing it or at least all the details.

Vančura Defense...hmm. All I could remember was Botvinnik-Fischer from the 1962 Olympiad.

— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) April 23, 2014

The writer of this report learnt about this ending thanks to the wonderful little book Secrets of Practical Chess by John Nunn, but obviously it's also treated in standard works such as Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual and even Wikipedia has a decent entry on it! But knowledge of one famous game and excellent calculating qualities can be good enough as well, as Nakamura played the ending flawlessly.

Etienne Bacrot still leads the B group after drawing his black game with Nijat Abasov. Wojtaszek won his second game in row in a 3.f3 Grünfeld (did he use some world Championship preparation there?).

Shamkir Chess 2014 | A | Pairings & results

Shamkir Chess 2014 | A | Round 4 Standings

#	Name	Rtg	Perf	1	2	3	4	5	6	Pts	SB
1	Caruana,Fabiano	2783	2873		1	½	½	½		2.5/4	5.50
2	Carlsen,Magnus	2881	2861	0		½		1	1	2.5/4	4.00
3	Karjakin,Sergey	2772	2784	½	½		½		½	2.0/4	4.00
4	Radjabov,Teimour	2713	2771	½		½		½	½	2.0/4	3.75
5	Nakamura,Hikaru	2772	2784	½	0		½		1	2.0/4	3.25
6	Mamedyarov,Shakhriyar	2760	2594		0	½	½	0		1.0/4

Shamkir Chess 2014 | B | Pairings & results

Shamkir Chess 2014 | B | Round 4 Standings

1	Name	Rtg	Perf	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	Pts	SB
1	Bacrot,Etienne	2722	2804					½		1	½		1	3.0/4
2	Eljanov,Pavel	2732	2749			1	½		½				½	2.5/4	5.00
3	Wojtaszek,Radoslaw	2716	2752		0		1					1	½	2.5/4	4.00
4	Motylev,Alexander	2685	2656		½	0		½	1					2.0/4	4.25
5	Abasov,Nijat	2516	2699	½			½				½	½		2.0/4	4.00
6	Mamedov,Rauf	2660	2701		½		0				1	½		2.0/4	3.50
7	Guseinov,Gadir	2621	2674	0							½	½	1	2.0/4	2.50
8	Wang,Hao	2734	2542	½				½	0	½				1.5/4	3.50
9	Safarli,Eltaj	2656	2540			0		½	½	½				1.5/4	3.00
10	Durarbayli,Vasif	2584	2507	0	½	½				0				1.0/4

The rounds start at 12:00 Amsterdam, 6am New York and 3am Los Angeles time. The official website is www.shamkirchess.az. Chess.com offers daily live commentary at www.chess.com/tv. Games via TWIC.