Fabiano Caruana retained his US Championship this week in his home town of St Louis, scoring an unbeaten five wins and six draws. The 31-year-old already looks a clear favourite in 2024 to win the world title which narrowly eluded him in 2018, when he drew all 12 classical games against Magnus Carlsen before losing the speed tiebreak.
In the past, Caruana has seemed a reserved personality, in contrast to the outgoing and articulate Carlsen, but in the past year he has gained many new admirers through his weekly C-Squared podcast on YouTube, an hour-long discussion of current chess issues. Additionally, his first Chessable instruction course was released last week, exactly coinciding with his new US Championship title.
Caruana’s fifth-round win against Andrew Tang at St Louis demonstrated an active counter to the Bf4 London System, but his other games followed his normal patient strategy of gradually building on a small strategic advantage.
Final US Championship scores were Caruana 8/11, Wesley So, Leinier Domínguez and Abhimanyu Mishra 6.5, Hans Niemann, Samuel Sevian and Ray Robson 5.5, Levon Aronian 5; and four others.
Apart from Caruana, the star performer was Mishra, 14, who tied for second prize and produced the best US championship result by an under‑15 since Bobby Fischer in 1957‑58.
Mishra, already the youngest ever grandmaster at 12, has a tough pragmatic style reminiscent of the former US great Samuel Reshevsky. His best game was his mature final-round win which scored the full point against Levon Aronian, who not so long ago was freely tipped as a potential Carlsen opponent. Chessboard reputations can rise and fall very quickly.
Meanwhile, the Qatar Open is in its final rounds this week. Carlsen seemed to have recovered from his shock second-round disaster and was just half a point behind the leaders with three rounds remaining, but then lost again with the white pieces to the 24-year-old twice Indian champion Murali Karthikeyan in round seven.
It was Carlsen’s sixth Indian opponent in seven rounds, and the No 1’s rival Hikaru Nakamura commented: “This is the future for him. The Indians are coming for him. It’s going to be one Indian after another, after another, after another, after another – all the disciples of Vishy!”
According to Tarjei Svensen, the Norwegian journalist who specialises in Carlsen statistics: “Carlsen’s classical rating performance in 2023 is down to 2782. He is now in danger of having his first yearly sub-2800 performance since 2008, after 14 straight years performing from 2807 to 2889.”
3890: 1 f3+ Kh4 2 Ra4! Rxa4+ 3 Kb5 traps the black rook after which White has a trivially won pawn ending: 3...Rg4 4 fxg4 Kxg4 5 Kc4 Kf5 6 Kd5! and White will queen his e or g pawn. The immediate 1 Ra4? Rxa4+ 2 Kb5 fails to 2...gxf2!
