American Chess - April 2018

By the time we had concluded the manuscript of American Chess Magazine #06, Fabiano Caruana had already made a great start at the Candidates Tournament in Berlin. In fact it’s almost as if he wanted to fulfill the “rollercoaster” prediction emblazoned on our front cover. Well, if the only way was up on his current rollercoaster ride after a brilliant win in London and an epic fall in Wijk aan Zee, then, as expressed by our “Readers’ Voices”, he was destined to shine brightly in Berlin. And he did! As we all now know, Fabiano did what was necessary in style and so qualifies as the next official challenger for the world title!

Under our primary scope in this issue are two events that preceded Fabiano’s historic success in the Candidates. At the London Classic, he scored 6/9 to finish first ahead of the world champion Magnus Carlsen, but then a month later, at Tata Steel, he was simply unrecognizable, scoring only 5/13.

A number of Caruana’s key games from London come under the spotlight with the help of two authors – our new contributor 16-year-old American prodigy John Burke, who completed his final GM norm almost at the same time as working on the article, and the experienced GM John Fedorowicz. Then GM Priyadarshan Kannappan, well-known coach at Webster Chess Club, takes up the tricky challenge to explain what could have possibly gone wrong afterwards…

Then again, Magnus Carlsen’s world class victory at Tata Steel is covered by our ringside reporter and first ever African 2700+ player, GM Bassem Amin from Egypt. In addition, Bassem provides commentary on the Masters Group in which he relates his own exciting experiences and also takes a look into the play of young American Jeffery Xiong with whom he tied for third place in the final standings.