CARUANA SAYS NO TO BISHOP F4
After Fabiano saved the game 1, he decided to get even in game two with black pieces. He countered Carlsen’s Harrwitz attack with a novelty on move 10 and equalized easily. True, he never gained serious winning chances like Magnus the day before, but he very firmly said no to bishop f4.
Game two report follows.
GAME COURSE
Just as in his match against Karjakin, Magnus decided to open with the queen’s pawn. However this time there wasn’t anything funky as Trompowsky – the most classical opening of them all, the Queen’s Gambit, appeared on the board.
On move 5, Carlsen decided to move his bishop to f4 instead of g5 – the so-called Harrwitz attack. Caruana answered with the second most popular response – the advance of the pawn to c5 on move 6. He continued playing quickly and on move 10 he got in his surprise first. In a heavily researched theoretical position, he moved his rook to d8 instead of e8. Carlsen had his first long think and avoided the most testing continuation, perhaps fearing his opponent’s preparation.
Caruana continued playing quickly and had no trouble equalizing. On move 15, Carlsen played an aggressive knight leap but overlooked his opponent’s calm reply. Due to the pawn weaknesses in his position (a4, c3, e5) he had to exercise some caution. Caruana’s undeveloped queenside provided him with the compensation.
The World Champion was precise and chose to go into a rook endgame in which he was a pawn down, but in which all the pawns were on the same wing. Caruana tried initiating some play, but in contrast to his opponent the day before, he was not up for 3 hours of torture and agreed to a draw rather soon.
GAME ANALYSIS
THE AFTERMATH?
Caruana is probably the moral victor, but both players can be satisfied with this game. On one hand, Caruana displayed excellent preparation and solved his problem rather easily. Carlsen, on the other hand, reacted well when confronted with a novelty and was never in real danger of losing (in contrast to his opponent in game one).
The match tension is retained. It will be interesting to see what will happen in the next game. Will Caruana repeat 1 e4? Will he be able to find something more convincing than the Rossolimo? Will Carlsen stick to his Sicilian? Or was it just a „one trick pony“?
An exciting Monday is in front of us.