London Chess Classic round 6: Caruana’s brilliant queen sacrifice

Fabiano Caruana is within 11 points of Magnus Carlsen on the rating list after beating Hikaru Nakamura with a in a razor-sharp line of the Najdorf Sicilian. Wesley So still leads after cashing in on Veselin Topalov’s continuing self-destruction, while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave did the same when Levon Aronian over-pressed. Even Vishy Anand was in trouble after a speculative sacrifice, but he managed to hold against Anish Giri.

8th London Chess Classic LIVE coverage

The final game between Vladimir Kramnik and Mickey Adams saw Big Vlad take a leaf out of Carlsen’s playbook:

It featured an exchange sacrifice met by an exchange sacrifice and a neat piece sacrifice to end the game in perpetual check, but it couldn’t help but pale into insignificance against the backdrop of the other games.

The net result is the table you can see below, where So, Caruana and Kramnik are spread out in the top three places before a group of five players on 50%.

With only three rounds to go it’s time for anyone with ambitions of winning the event to strike, so don’t miss Round 7 on Friday. Tune in from 17:00 CET for all the Round 6 action, while you can replay the Round 6 show, including all the player interviews, below:

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8th London Chess Classic LIVE coverage