All draws so far in Shamkir, but not for the lack of the players’ trying.

Sometimes tournaments go like that. Everybody wants to win, but everbody also wants to avoid losing. And if the tendency to avoid losing is dominant, you get a lot of draws. It happens.

Ding Liren was winning in Round 1 against Wojtaszek. Topalov was winning in Round 2 against Giri and in Round 3 against Ding Liren. Conversely, Carlsen wasn’t even close to a win in any of his games.

The World Champion would very much want to win every tournament he plays in. He must have been very disappointed not to obtain winning chances against the relative outsiders Navara and Mamedov. He was very effectively neutralised in both of these games. That hurts.

On a more positive side, he demonstrated a very convincing way to solve all opening problems with Black in the Fianchetto Variation in the Grunfeld Defence. The line was introduced in practice by Dubov (quite a fertile opening innovator!) and this time it got the stamp of approval of the World Champion. The psychological background of the opening moves is also highly instructive and illustrative of Carlsen’s approach to preparation.

As you can see, even from a superficially “boring” theoretical draw one can learn quite a lot!

On the other side of the ocean, the US Championship is under way. At the time of writing three games of Round 4 have finished – Shankland beat Robson with Black, Zherbukh and Onischuk drew and Nakamura scored his 4th draw, this time against Liang. The leaders Caruana, So and Akobian are still playing.

I wanted to note what is happening to Nakamura. He started with 2 Whites, drew both (against Robson and Zherebukh) without a single chance for even an advantage. Then he was lost with Black against Onischuk with Black in Round 3 and again had nothing at all against Liang in Round 4.

This is a worrying tendency for one of the “big 3” of American chess. He is getting nothing from the openings and is not even getting close to outplaying his on-paper weaker opponents. My impression is that he has lost the energy and aggression in his play.

I see this change as a result of his loss of ambition. He realised he will never become a World Champion. He will not be the one who will “deal with Sauron.” Once the ambition had gone, he comfortably settled in his current situation of a Top-10 player who makes excellent living from playing chess and travelling the world. His Twitter profile says “Professional Chess Player and Investor/Trader.” Yes, he is not only a chess player and he seems to be very good at investing/trading. That is another excellent source of income for him. These changes are his choice, of course, but the player who was once an epitome of energy, aggression and courage is now gone.

Both tournaments have a lot of rounds to play, so things can get very exciting in Shamkir (once Carlsen starts winning!) and the US Championships never fail to entertain.