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Chess.com Isle Of Man: Nakamura, Wojtaszek Join Lead

Fiona Steil-Antoni conducting an interview at the Isle of Man. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

Written by Mike Klein | Read the full report at https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-com-isle-of-man-nakamura-wojtaszek-join-lead

In the last three rounds of the 2018 Chess.com Isle of Man International, the number of leaders has gone from two to four to six. You might want to go ahead and check those playoff regulations now. There might have been an unlikely seventh, but the "Minister of Defense," Sergey Karjakin, saved a completely lost game.

Today's increase came since another draw on the top board gave others in the chase group a chance to catch up, and Hikaru Nakamura and Radoslaw Wojtaszek did just that. It also helped that one of the four pre-round leaders, Arkadij Naiditsch, took the day off with a bye.

Was Naiditsch just ensuring he would avoid an elite player? Perhaps not—it was also his birthday, and as Lennart Ootes pointed out, he'd lost the last three games he played on October 25!

Nakamura can sympathize, to a degree. He said he played "one of the worst games of my life" the last time he played on his birthday (against Wesley So), but he added that it had probably been at least 15 years since he took a bye for any reason.

Read the full report at https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-com-isle-of-man-nakamura-wojtaszek-join-lead

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