Intense Hikaru !

Intense Hikaru !

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In my previous post I elaborated on "intense game: you were never in trouble !"  where one side gradually increases the pressure and the advantage

https://www.chess.com/blog/thechesscorner64/types-of-games-and-improving-your-chess

and here's another recent example by Hikaru Nakamura @Hikaru vs Dominguez 

which corresponds to 4. below 

So Let's analyze such a game Hikaru Vs Lenier Dominguez (Titled Tuesday Tournament Nov 1 2022) , two reasonably matched strong GMs in the USA top 10 for a long time.

First the opening phase.

Hikaru is not going for a sharp and theoretical Najdorf. He goes 1e4 c5 2Nf3 d6 3c3!?

and here's the next important position

Hikaru is starting slowly, i.e building d2-d3 and only later on d3-d4. Now he is routing his knight on f1 and then g3, questioning the bishop on h5. He also delayed castling and played super quickly. Illustrating this with arrows

Now the game goes on and @Hikaru is showing patience. akin to building a spider web. Here Hikaru with White plays Nd2 with the idea Nd2-c4

and we reach a few moves later the critical moment where finally Black cracks under the continued pressure.

this is White to play in the following diagram

Did you find it ? White to play and increase the advantage significantly.

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Here's the end of the game  with the solution.

@Hikaru shows great accuracy and I added variations/annotations as this phase is very well executed !

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Here's the game replay from beginning to end

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Another example !
here's an earlier game between Hikaru and Duda in 2019. @Hikaru uses a similar set up with c2-c3 and Bd3-c2
and the best for last
This is what the Game Analysis shows
'
and once again an "intense" game, where White was in the driver seat from the beginning and converted ! 
Super Impressive, except a certain Magnus is currently leading the blitz charts on chess.com
Would you like an entry about Magnus Carlsen Style in Blitz ? Who else in the top 12 are you interested in replaying/analyzing blitz games  ?
let me know