Chess960: Puzzle no.13 from the Sinquefield Cup 2014 - Game 4

Here is a beautiful Chess960 puzzle from the fourth game of the 2014 Sinquefield Cup between Chess960 world champions Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian. Levon was faced with an interesting puzzle as early as move 4:

SP896 black to play (O-O-O possible) move 4:
Can Levon (black) take Hikaru's h2 pawn
without loosing material?

The answer is very funny, so enjoy it!

(solution: bottom left corner)

Answer, yes!:
Aronian decided against it, possibly because of the Rf2/g3 trap,
and so he played 4...Nh6 instead.
However:

4.     ... Nxh2!?

5. Rf2 ... b6!

6. g3  ... Ng4!! and the knight flees with attack! 

Chess960: Sinquefield Cup 2014 Corner bishops stay on the board!

The pgn games of the Sinquefield Cup 2014 are available for us fans to enjoy ->here<- Thanks for that! I've updated the Chess960 database on this blog with the six games to bring the total number of Chess960 games up to 1676.

Critics of Chess960 say that the bishops in the corner are just plain bad, because they get exchanged off early resulting in dull games....

Well I think Hikaru and Levon think otherwise! In the first two games of the match between Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian, both bishops were in the corner. The bishops did not get exchanged off for a long time and they produced very interesting games!

SP579 Nakamura v Aronian move 6 white to play

SP579 Aronian v Nakamura move 9 white to play

Look at the different approaches to the opening
taken by both players, excellent stuff!

In game two Aronian had white and tried the idea to damage blacks kingside pawn structure with 3.Bxf6 leaving Nakamura's bishop entombed in the corner by two pawns. What did Nakamura do? He just spent the tempo playing g6 and f5 to free his bishop in the corner and went on to win the game!

Big picture question for this SP. Is queenside castling a possibility, even though we did not see it in these two games?