Nakamura cracked Akobian’s French (and finally won) ⎸2018 US Championship, Round 10

Hikaru Nakamura vs Varuzhan Eduardovich Akobian, French Defense, Winawer Variation C18, Retreat Variation, Armenian Line
2018 US Chess Championship, Round 10, St. Louis, 04/28/18

The great Var Akobian is unfortunately having a less then ideal performance at the US Championship. Despite starting off great with a magnificent win in the Dutch, he is now at only 4/10. His play was definitely at a much higher level and he deserved more. Nakamura is having a bad tournament as well. This game is his first victory (despite being close twice). He drew and lost all his games, which is very uncommon for him.

In round 10 they clashed in the Winawer French, and Akobian chose the retreat variation, which is far less popular than the main line with taking on c3. After b4 he went for the Armenian line of the retreat Winawer (he is an Armenian American, and this is, I believe, the only chess variation which bears the name of Armenia). In this line black will most often emerge a doubled pawn up, and almost always give it back for development, but Akobian managed to hold on to it and equalized comfortably.

In a position in which he even had a slight advantage he made a subtle but decisive blunder with 15…a6, giving Nakamura far too much time and piece activity. From then on it just kept getting worse and worse for Var and he eventually had to give up an exchange to survive which led to an easy conversion for Hikaru.

Standings after round 10:

Samuel Shankland 7.5/10
Fabiano Caruana 7/10
Wesley So 6/10
Aleksandr Lenderman 5/10
Jeffery Xiong 5/10
Hikaru Nakamura 5/10
Ray Robson 4.5/10
Awonder Liang 4.5/10
Zviad Izoria 4.5/10
Varuzhan Eduardovich Akobian 4/10
Yaroslav Zherebukh 4/10
Alexander Vasilyevich Onischuk 3/10

Game moves:

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. a3 Ba5 6. b4 cxd4
7. Nb5 Bc7 8. f4 Bd7 9. Nf3 Bxb5 10. Bxb5+ Nc6 11. Bd3 Nge7
12. O-O Bb6 13. Kh1 Qd7 14. Rb1 Nf5 15. a4 a6 (this was the decisive error by Akobian; if he’d played a5 instead, the game would have remained equal) 16. a5 Ba7
17. Bxf5 exf5 18. Ba3 Rc8 19. b5 axb5 20. Rxb5 Nd8 21. Qb1 Rc3
22. e6 fxe6 23. Ne5 Qc7 24. Qb4 g5 25. Qa4 Rxa3 26. Qxa3 gxf4
27. Re1 Qc3 28. Qc1 Rg8 29. Nd3 Kd7 30. Qxf4 Kc8 31. a6 bxa6
32. Rb3 Qc7 33. Qxc7+ Kxc7 34. Ra3 Bb6 35. Rxa6 Kb7 36. Ra3
Rg7 37. Rb3 Rc7 38. Reb1 Rc6 39. Ne5 Rd6 40. Rh3 Nc6 41. Rxh7+
Ka6 42. Rd7 Rxd7 43. Nxd7 Ba7 44. h4 e5 45. h5 e4 46. h6 d3
47. cxd3 Bd4 48. dxe4 fxe4 49. h7 Ne7 50. Nc5+ 1-0

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