Hikaru Nakamura, streamer extraordinaire and world number two, failed to make it past the round four in the FIDE World Cup as 18-year-old Indian phenom Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa defeated him in back-to-back games in the first tiebreaker round on Aug. 11.
After two draws in the classical games, the series between the two grandmasters progressed to tiebreakers with faster time control. Just like in their two classical games, the players went into a well-known tactical line of the King’s English Opening, but this particular sideline quickly led to a venomous affair, where a typical piece sacrifice by White didn’t work out because of the move order and the bishop’s placement.
Nine moves in, the players entered a brand new position, one where Nakamura was already in significant trouble, with his knight trapped on h4 and lacking the compensation needed to make things work.
Soon after, the knight fell, and despite Nakamura’s best efforts to complicate affairs, he lost the first game in decisive fashion, needing a win with the Black pieces in game two to force a further tiebreaker.
As is commonplace in situations like this, the American went for a slightly dubious and double-edged opening in the form of the Pirc Defense, but in a bid to keep pieces on the board and maintain complications for a possible win, he ended up in a woeful position and a stunning tactical sequence after move 26 left Pragg with an extra bishop. Though Nakamura played for a while longer out of frustration, the result was never in doubt from that point on.
The relentless nature of the knockout bracket in the 2023 Chess World Cup has already claimed many super-grandmaster victims, with Anish Giri, Wesley So, Teimour Radjabov, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov already eliminated in the early rounds.
At the time of writing, Vincent Keymer has just survived Magnus Carlsen’s onslaught in the first tiebreaker series, pushing the series to two 10+10 matches.
