Hikaru Nakamura and Alireza Firouzja will face each other in an elimination battle on Day 2 of the ChessKid Cup after both suffered shock losses. Hikaru was beaten 2.5:1.5 by Jorden van Foreest, while Alireza Firouzja lost a five-game thriller to Dmitrij Kollars in Armageddon. On the other half of the bracket Fabiano Caruana and Nodirbek Abdusattorov clinched wins with a round to spare.

The ChessKid Cup, the 3rd event on the $2 million 2023 Champions Chess Tour, is being played on Chess.com and runs May 22-26. On Day 1 there were four clear favourites to progress to the semi-finals, but instead we got two shock results.

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The two results that went with rating were 3-game wins for Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Fabiano Caruana, with both mentioning how smooth things had been. 18-year-old Nodirbek Abdusattorov, like Hikaru Nakamura already in Stavanger in the run-up to Norway Chess, was completely untroubled. French star Jules Moussard usually whips up chaos on board, but got nowhere against the Uzbek 2021 World Rapid Champion.

Nodirbek eased to a win with White in Game 1, held effortlessly with Black in Game 2, and then wrapped things up when Jules decided he could afford to grab a pawn in the third game.

Passive defence should hold for Black, but 44…Rxf2? let the a-pawn run with 45.a5 Ra2 46.a7, and the pawn soon cost Jules a rook and the game. Nodirbek explained how much it meant to him to play in Division I after winning Division II in the Chessable Masters.

Fabiano Caruana was fresh from winning the Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest and was also in impressive form, though he confessed Game 1 against Aleksandra Shimanov’s French had gone badly wrong.

9…g5! 10.Ne2 g4! 11.Ngf1 f6! had Fabiano on the ropes. He commented:

It does look terrifying, but by the time Caruana had played 17.Nf3! he was on top.

By the end he was the one giving checkmate.

Fabiano went on to make an easy draw with the black pieces and then finished in style in Game 3.

34.Rxd7! was a way to deflect the queen from the attack on d4, since 34…Qxd7 runs into 35.Bf6! and there’s no good defence against a quick checkmate.

Shimanov tried to play on with 34…Rxd4, but after 35.Qe3 Re4 36.Qxa7 he was just a full piece down, so that it didn’t matter that his time ran out.

The real drama, however, was on the other side of the bracket. In the first game Jorden van Foreest gave up his queen against Hikaru Nakamura and whipped up a ferocious attack.

That finish never happened, but the game variation was just as convincing, with Hikaru’s king completely stranded among the black army.

Hikaru’s decision to play the Modern Defence with 1…g6 and 2…d6 in Game 2 led only to a lost position in around 14 moves, but this time his tenacity paid off as he fought his way back and then exploited a blunder to level the scores.

Making a 13-move draw with the white pieces in Game 3 looked questionable, but since at that stage Hikaru had a dubious position, and the previous two games had been won by Black, it was understandable. It would also have been swiftly forgotten if Hikaru had managed to bring some brilliant sacrificial play in Game 4 to its logical conclusion.

Instead, with 38…Rf5? he fell for the sucker punch 39.Rxh6!

39…gxh6? runs into 40.Nh6+, and while the position was far from lost after 39…Rf4 it was Hikaru who was now fighting to hold on. He didn’t manage, and was so disgusted with what had happened that he just walked away and let the final 27 seconds run out on his clock.

It wasn’t just Hikaru who suffered, however, with live world no. 2 Alireza Firouzja getting more than he can have bargained for against 23-year-old German Grandmaster Dmitrij Kollars, who said, “it was even more exciting to play than to watch probably”, and confessed:

It was clear we were in for something special in a wild first game, where first Alireza was completely winning, then the pendulum swung Kollars’ way.

He was winning here with Black, but needed to find 46…Qa1+! 47.Kh2 Qd4 when the threat of capturing on f2 with check prevents any white defence. Instead 46…Qxh6? 47.Qxh6 Rxf2 just left Alireza able to pick up pawns and eventually wrap up victory.

Firouzja then missed a tricky chance to all but clinch the match by taking a 2:0 lead.

24…Qh6! (or 24…Qh5) was the way, and it turns out that after 25.gxf4 Qh3+! 26.Kg1 Re6! Black’s attack will cost White too much material. Instead after 24…Ne2 Firouzja later blundered and the scores were level.

Game 3 was a shocker, as Alireza, down to seconds, blundered mate-in-1 with 38.Qd3?? in a position where 38.Qf5 was winning.

That meant he faced one of the toughest tasks in chess, having to win with the black pieces on demand. His pain was evident as early as move 3.

He spent almost a minute before going for 3…Ng8!?, which was as bad as it looks, but in the end he managed to take over and win the game. It was perhaps a case of Kollars playing too aggressively in a game he only needed to a draw, but we’d soon see that playing too passively can be just as big a liability.

The match went to Armageddon, with Alireza winning the bidding war to get Black and only need a draw, but at the cost of giving his opponent a 7-minute headstart. He played the Berlin, but Kollars had prepared for such a case before the match and went on to get a nagging edge. It became significant, until only 27…Kh8! was a convincing defence, while 27…Qe7 ran into 28.b5!

Beating Firouzja is seldom that easy, and as late as move 37 Black was on the verge of equalising.

37…f6!, or 37…Qe5+ first and then 38...f6, and the position is playable for Black, but after 37…Kf8? 38.Qg3! it was gone, with 38…Qxa6 running into one of the winning options, 39.f6! From that point on, Dmitrij made no more mistakes and clinched a huge victory.

That means that we do get Nakamura-Firouzja on Tuesday, but not, as we expected, in a semi-final where the loser would still have one life remaining, but as an elimination battle where the loser will be out of the event!

Elsewhere Dmitry Andreikin and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov were among the players to suffer defeats in the always competitive Division II.

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