The Caruana conundrum

Over the course of this year Fabiano Caruana has scored splendidly in tournaments with classical time limits, notching up first prizes in the Berlin Candidates tournament, Baden Baden and Stavanger. The first of these triumphs qualified him to contest the World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen, the title holder, in London in November. In the second and third Caruana finished ahead of Carlsen himself on both occasions. Nevertheless, the worm in the fruit was that Caruana had to fight to the death with the white pieces to save himself against Carlsen at Baden Baden while in Stavanger Caruana actually lost his individual clash with the world champion, recovering brilliantly to take the overall laurels. Where Caruana has slipped up is in quickplay events. In the first leg of this year’s Grand Chess Tour Wesley So won the rapidplay section while Sergei Karjakin came out on top of the blitz. Caruana failed miserably on both occasions, and it has become clear that his most serious weakness is to be found in games played at non-classical time limits. As far as the World Championship match is concerned, Caruana’s Achilles heel would only become apparent were there to be a rapidplay play-off in the event of a tie in the main match. As it is, I fully expect Carlsen to wrap up the match in his favour well before any tie-breaks might be instituted, hence Caruana’s main failing will probably have little bearing on the destination of the title. This week some examples of Caruana’s catastrophes from Leuven.
 
Caruana–Karjakin; Leuven Blitz 2018

(diagram 1)
 
Although White is a pawn up and threatens Ne7+, his own king is very exposed. 44 … Re5 Karjakin ignores the threat. He is more interested in getting at White’s vulnerable king. 45 Ne7+ Rdxe7 46 fxe7 Qxe7 47 Rd8+ Caruana tries to play aggressively but the circumspect 47 Rg4 was more to the point.