Caruana leads at Stavanger after beating Carlsen

Fabiano Caruana got off to a fine start this week at the Norway Chess elite event in Stavanger, where the US champion defeated Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, in the opening round and was a clear leader after three of the nine rounds.

Carlsen, in contrast, trails in eighth place, despite scoring after replays in his next two games against Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura. The Norwegian has won Stavanger for four years in a row, so it is too early to discount his recovery chances, but with only six rounds left his task is already difficult.

It was Carlsen’s first classical defeat against Caruana since 2015, a period which included their 2018 world title match in London where all 12 classical games were drawn.

Carlsen’s opening choice as Black, the French Defence 1 e4 e6, was intended as a surprise, but Caruana still recalled that at Black’s 13th Qb5! was the right choice rather than Qa5+, which gave a position where White’s knights were active. Carlsen could still have held a draw as late as move 31 by exchanging knights at f4, but he missed 31…Rc3? 32 Nd7! and soon resigned in the face of a white rook on the seventh rank.

In a nine-round elite tournament, recovery for Carlsen will be hard, but he made a good start on Wednesday and Thursday by defeating his old rivals So and Nakamura in Armageddon replays after draws in the classical games. Nakamura tried the King’s Gambit 1 e4 e5 2 f4, but it was Carlsen who developed a winning attack.

After Thursday’s third round the Stavanger scores were Caruana (US) 7.5, Alireza Firouzja (France) 6, Nakamura (US) 5, Dommaraju Gukesh (India) 4.5, Anish Giri (Netherlands) and Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) 4, So (US) 3.5, Carlsen (Norway) 3, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) 2.5, Aryan Tari (Norway) 1.

Firouzja, the 19-year-old world No 2, won a fine game in round three and at this early stage is looking like Caruana’s most dangerous rival.