Many had written Daniil Dubov off after he lost Day 1 of the final against Hikaru Nakamura, but he proved the doubters wrong by storming back to level the tie on Day 2. Once again the first game of the day was vital, with Daniil outpreparing Hikaru with the black pieces and going on to grind out a win from a slightly better endgame. He described his strategy to match Hikaru as, “I will play random normal moves quickly,” and it seemed to work! Dubov drew the next three games to set up a $45,000 decider on Wednesday.
“At least it was better than yesterday!” was Daniil Dubov’s understated assessment of Day 2 of the final. Almost everything that could go wrong the day before had gone wrong at the start for Daniil, who was staring at a 0:2 deficit before he was recognisably himself again. This time, however, there was to be no repeat. Instead Hikaru Nakamura’s opening surprise in Game 1, playing the Alapin Sicilian with 3.c3, backfired:
