Nakamura wins Magistral D'Escacs in Barcelona : The American GM Nakamura scored 7/9 points to win the tournament. His performance rating went over 2900 with six wins, two draws, and a loss to GM Josep Pallise Oms of Spain. Geez, that must have thrilled the local fans. Well, Hikaru, you can't win all the time. Second and third places went to GM Dominguez Perez 6/9 and GM V. Gashimov 5.5/9 respectively. Here's the endgame between Nakamura ( white) and Dominguez:


White was a piece up at the moment, but black had a 3-1 pawn majority on the queenside which was under fire. Black's rook and bishop's positions are inferior to their counterparts in white, and the same can be said about the king positions. Domiguez, instead of capturing the knight on a5, played 25...c6 and Nakamura returned the piece with 26.Nc6 bc 27.Bc6 Bc6 28.Rc6 Ra2 29.Rc2 and here you can see that white is very much in control. Black's B pawn looked ripe for the picking and the black king had no part in the action at this point. Play continued 29...b3 30.Re2 Ra1 31.Kd2 Ra6 32.Kc3 Rb6 33.Kc4 ( to allow the rook to attack the B pawn ) Ke7 34.Re3 Rh6 and black started thrashing around, looking for counter play 35.h3 Rg6 36.Re2 Rb6 37.f4 h5 38.g3 h4 trying to create weaknesses ( 38.g4 Rf6 39.f5 hg4 40.hg4 Rh6 ) 39.g4 Rd6 40.Re3 ( securing the h3 pawn and finally the fall of the pawn on b3 is imminent ) Rd2 41. Kb3 Rf2 42.f5 f6 43. e5 fe5 44. Re5 and white won in another six moves.