Norway Chess, Round 1: Classical Wins for Caruana & Firouzja, an Armageddon Win for Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen took up where he left off last year, winning an Armageddon game. He won lots of them last year on his way to a decisive victory in the 2019 Norway Chess tournament. This year, with the different scoring system, that strategy may not prove as effective. We'll see.

At any rate, he got off to a good start, drawing comfortably on the Black side of a Nimzo-Indian with an early 6.Bd2 against Levon Aronian, and then winning the Armageddon game to collect 1.5 points on the day. Aronian was equal-to-better until the last move, but because he needed a win he had to keep taking risks even after the position became at best drawn for him, and short of time he blundered a rook. Even so, he collected a point on the round.

The other two matches finished with 3-0 scores. Fabiano Caruana - or rather, his second, Rustam Kasimdzhanov - found a brilliant new idea in the Taimanov Sicilian, and despite being a pawn down in an ending Caruana enjoyed enduring pressure against Aryan Tari. Tari cracked on move 36, retreating his bishop on the wrong diagonal, and Caruana was able to invade and win. It was an impressive performance by Caruana, one that even impressed Vladimir Kramnik, who was commentating along with Judit Polgar. (If you have the chance to watch the commentary, it's well worth your time to do so. The players are engaging in substantive interviews with K & P afterwards, too.)

Finally, Jan-Krzysztof Duda seemed at sea in the opening against Alireza Firouzja, and was lost fairly quickly. Firouzja's technique was not immaculate, but Duda failed to make the most of his chances and lost anyway.

The games, with my brief comments, are here; here are tomorrow's pairings:

• Carlsen (1.5) - Firouzja (3)
• Caruana (3) - Duda (0)
• Aronian (1) - Tari (0)

Banter Blitz 2020 Final, Day 2

Today's matches were mostly routs, but there was one glorious exception. All the first-round pairings involved seeded players facing off against qualifiers, and while the latter are all terrific players there's still a gap (with one exception; two [at least or especially in blitz], counting yesterday, when qualifier and 2013 World Blitz Champion Le Quang Liem upended Teimour Radjabov) between them and the creme de la creme of the world's elite.

There were five matches today: Levon Aronian vs. Gawain Jones, Anish Giri vs. Peter Svidler, Magnus Carlsen vs. S.L. Narayanan, Alexander Grischuk vs. Rauf Mamedov, and Fabiano Caruana vs. Matthias Bluebaum. Excepting the Giri-Svidler match - the one case where the qualifier (Svidler) is himself a member of the world elite, and indeed, the player whose overall career is still the more impressive one - the other four matches were blowouts, with the losing side collectively achieving only three wins. Carlsen won 5.5-.5 (obviously going undefeated), Aronian won 5.5-2.5 (Jones won one game), Grischuk won 5.5-1.5 (also undefeated), and Caruana dropped a couple of games to Bluebaum on the way to a 5.5-2.5 victory (he started off 3-0, and was never really threatened).

Giri-Svidler, by contrast, was a dream match. The first seven games were decisive, with White winning the first six before Svidler broke the string in game seven. After a couple of draws, Svidler only needed a draw in game 10 to clinch the match, but lost. Two further draws ensued, and then Giri won the Armageddon game with White to win the match 7-6. (Giri's wins in games 1, 3, and 13 are here.)

Tomorrow the last of the first-round matches takes place between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Grigoriy Oparin, and then the quarter-finals will look like this:

• Carlsen - Giri
• Aronian - Grischuk
• Caruana - Le Quang Liem
• So - MVL/Oparin

Website here.

Magnus Carlsen Invitational, Semi-Finals: Nakamura and Carlsen Win; Play in Today's Final

It's not exactly a first, seeing Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura face off in the finals of a tournament with a short time control, and the renewal of their rivalry gives us all something to look forward to. Nakamura beat Fabiano Caruana on Friday and Carlsen beat Ding Liren on Saturday, but both players struggled on their way to victory.

The first two games of the Nakamura-Caruana match were drawn. Caruana had a small but usable edge in game 1, while Nakamura had a serious, possibly winning advantage in game 2. Caruana collapsed in game 3, losing with White, but in game 4 he gave Nakamura a taste of his own medicine. It has been a while now, but in the '00s Nakamura won many gorgeous games on the black side of the Classical King's Indian, breaking through against the enemy king while his opponents tried to crash through on the queenside. This wasn't a Classical King's Indian, but the themes were very similar, and it was Caruana whose kingside play trumped Nakamura's queenside advantages. White had been better, but as often happens in King's Indian(-ish) race situations, the player whose king comes under fire finds it difficult to play a perfect defense.

It was on to a two-game blitz playoff (a difference between the final four and the preliminaries is that the Armageddon game only comes after (up to) two two-game blitz playoffs). Nakamura looked set to win yet another game with the black pieces, but once again Caruana scraped up counterplay, outplayed Nakamura, and had good chances to win a second straight game. Unfortunately for him, he had a blackout, sacrificing a rook to create a threat that Nakamura's last move had prevented. This meant the sacrifice was an outright blunder, and he resigned several moves later. He gave a good try in the last game, but ultimately achieved no more than a drawn ending. As that was no better than a loss, he did what he could to make "something" happen, and that turned out to be a lost queen ending. So Nakamura wound up winning by an overall score of 4-2 but the match was obviously much closer than a double-up score would suggest.

While Carlsen won in "regular time", he was much closer to being eliminated than Nakamura. The first game was a normal draw, and game two was well-played and even until Carlsen blundered into mate for the second time in the tournament (the first time was in game two of his match with Alireza Firouzja). Down a point, he came out of the opening of game three with a lousy position, despite having the white pieces, but then he got bailed out when Ding played 20...f6(?). It made sense to keep White's knight out of e5, but the resulting light-squared weaknesses were an even bigger problem. He was lost after some further inaccuracies, but a Carlsen error gave him a chance to save the game. He missed it, and this time he walked into a speedy mate.

All tied up, game 4 was an epic battle, a completely crazy game with both players fighting for the win. Everything was unclear and both sides had serious winning chances at different points in the game. Even very close to the end there were several moments where Ding could have had a winning or near-winning advantage, but in the end he made the last error(s) and lost.

All the games, with my comments, are here. Let's hope for a great final today (Sunday), and hope that another elite event will happen soon. (Hopefully with much better play. My suspicion is that the players weren't used to playing such "slow" online games. Bullet? Oh, yes. Three-minute? Sure, and even five-minute is not out of their online comfort zone. But 15-minute chess is practically correspondence chess by online standards, and takes getting used to - especially since it's an unusual time control for these players, period - they don't use this time control in "real" (=OTB) events either, except on occasion in the tiebreak rounds of the World Cup.

Magnus Carlsen Invitational, Day 2: Caruana Squeaks Past Nepo; MVL Drubs Giri

It was another interesting day with shaky play and surprising results. Fabiano Caruana was probably losing both of his first two games with Ian Nepomniachtchi, but drew both of them. He drew the third game as well, and then won the fourth game from what was at one moment a dodgy position. Meanwhile, Anish Giri lost the first two games to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave - the first one for no sensible reason at all - and the Frenchmen drew the last two games to coast in with a 3-1 victory.

I don't know if total points play a role in a possible tiebreak, but they are otherwise irrelevant to the scoring. Whether a player wins the match 4-0 or 2.5-1.5 - provided he wins without an Armageddon game - he wins the match 3-0. If he needs to win the Armageddon game, then he gets 2 points for the match and his opponent gets a single point. Therefore, after one round Caruana and MVL join Ding Liren (who defeated Alireza Firouzja 2.5-1.5 in their match on Saturday) in the early lead with three points apiece, a point ahead of Magnus Carlsen who needed the extra game to dispatch Hikaru Nakamura. In their regular games, White won every time, with Carlsen grinding out endgame victories in the first and third games while Nakamura won with a direct attack in game 2 and by taking advantage of a couple of blunders in game 4. In the Armageddon game, Nakamura had White, but the streak was broken. He overextended in his attempt to attack, and then a blunder in a bad position sealed his fate.

Here are the pairings for round two, with the first two pairings occurring tomorrow and the next two on Tuesday:

• Carlsen (2) - Firouzja (0)
• Nakamura (1) - Giri (0)
• Nepomniachtchi (0) - Vachier-Lagrave (3)
• Ding Liren (3) - Caruana (3)

Carlsen-Firouzja ought to be a lot of fun, as the World Champion seeks revenge for the damage the youngster has been doing to him at faster time controls. Nepo vs. MVL is also interesting, as the Candidates co-leaders square off. Will Nepo achieve a (very, very) small measure of revenge for his defeat in the final round of the first cycle of that event?

Play begins at 10 a.m. ET each day, and can be viewed live on Chess24 and Twitch; probably elsewhere, too. For the games, I'll send you to TWIC's page for the event.

Magnus Carlsen Invitational: The Line-Up

This eight-player online event starts this coming Saturday, April 18, and features a fantastic field starting with the world champion. Magnus Carlsen is playing, as is world #2 (and 2018 challenger) Fabiano Caruana, world #3 Ding Liren, #4 (and Candidates co-leader) Ian Nepomniachtchi, world #5 (and Candidates co-leader) Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, world #10 (and renowned Twitter troll) Anish Giri, world #18 (and blitz legend) Hikaru Nakamura, and world #21 (and 16-year-old super-prodigy) Alireza Firouzja. The event will last 16 days, running through May 3, and has an impressive $250,000 prize fund.

The event has two stages. The first is a round-robin, with each pairing comprising a 4-game rapid match at a 15'+10" time control. The first six rounds will take two days, with two simultaneous matches each day, while all four matches will take place simultaneously on the last day. The scoring is unusual: if a player wins the 4-game match he gets three points, but if it finishes 2-2 they play an Armageddon game, in which case the winner gets two points and the loser one. After that there's a final four knockout, with the first semi on the first day, the second semi on the second, and the final on the third day. If any of those matches reach a 2-2 score, they play a pair of 5'+3" games, and Armageddon after that, if necessary.

The event will take place on Chess24, and I'm sure it will be viewable on YouTube as well.

Candidates, Round 2: Second Verse, Same as the First

The first round was repeated; only the names were changed to protect the innocent. Once again there were two blowout wins, a draw that should have had a decisive result, and a well-played draw. Four players share the lead, while second seed Ding Liren is alone in last with the same number of points he had at the start of the tournament.

About Ding: his round 2 game with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was a complete disaster. Poor preparation, serious positional errors, and very little resistance. This is not the real Ding Liren - so far he's not even a shadow of his usual self. Hopefully he can turn it around, and if he comes up short it will be because his best wasn't good enough, and not because he was only able to produce his worst chess.

The other victory was also one-sided. Fabiano Caruana played 1.d4 and met Kirill Alekseenko's Nimzo-Indian with 4.f3. His 13.d6 was a critical decision. It seems that Black can equalize after this, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to solve it at the board. Alekseenko replied incorrectly, and after that Caruana was all over him, finishing things off with a crushing kingside attack.

Wang Hao was very close to taking the clear lead with 2/2 - and saddling Anish Giri with 0/2. He played a very good game, won a pawn, and achieved a technically won position at the end of the first time control. Giri defended very well, though, and bit by bit the advantage dissipated.

Finally, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alexander Grischuk contested the Berlin ending, and Nepo's novelty on move 17 failed to bear fruit. Grischuk made a comfortable draw.

Here are the games, with my notes, and in the morning we'll see what the chase pack can do with white against the leaders:

• Ding Liren (0) - Caruana (1.5)
• Giri (.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (1.5)
• Grischuk (1) - Wang Hao (1.5)
• Alekseeko (.5) - Nepomniachtchi (1.5)

Candidates, Round 1: Wang Hao, Nepo Win With Black

Unfortunately, Vladimir Kramnik is a principled person; as a protest against the Candidates tournament taking place he decided not to commentate. I approve of his decision even as I regret it - it's a serious loss for chess fans! On the other hand, we were given a boon for round 1, as Peter Svidler - who is seconding one of the players, Kirill Alekseenko - and none other than Magnus Carlsen joined in the commentary.

It was quite the lively round, too, and a surprising one. Two of the four games were decisive, a third game was close to having a winner, and the fourth game was very exciting even if neither player was too close to the abyss.

The draw was the marquee matchup between super-sub Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and the favorite, Fabiano Caruana. In the day's only non-English, MVL played the Ruy, Caruana used the neo-Archangelsk, one of his long-time favorite lines, and prepared an interesting new move. The game seems to have been very well played by both sides, and remained tense until fairly near the time control.

The secondary favorite, Ding Liren, had White against his countryman, Wang Hao. Wang Hao was semi-retired before qualifying for this event, and I seem to recall reading that he doesn't even have a second - at least not on site. Every reason could be offered why Ding would defeat him, but he didn't; in fact, he lost. Ding seems to have overvalued the knight vs. bishop imbalance he headed for with 30.f4. The position was static, but in this case that didn't mean that the knight would be the dominant piece. Despite a slip on move 39 (39...Rd4 should have been played) and White's missed chance on move 40 (40.d4!), Black played better and deservedly won; 41...Rg4 was the key move, and an attractive one.

Anish Giri also had White, and like Ding Liren is a player who rarely loses. Well...he lost. His conquerer was Ian Nepomniachtchi, who did a better job of navigating a razor-sharp line of the English. Giri started the trouble with the near-novelty 12.Rc1, but the players seemed to be in prep until Nepo's 19...b4; Giri expected Black to capture on c4 with the rook or the b-pawn instead. Giri lost the thread over the next few moves, and ultimately found himself in a rook vs. queen ending where there was no fortress to be found. It was a long win by Nepo, one which was well played and well earned.

Finally, Alexander Grischuk had an enormous space advantage against Kirill Alekseenko and seemed on his way to victory. He may have cashed out a bit too quickly, and although he was still better with his extra pawn Black's light-squared blockade and counterplay eventually saved the day.

I've annotated a couple of the games (one somewhat informally, based on analysis done with a friend), which you can replay (with the other two games) here. Here are the pairings for round 2:

• Caruana (.5) - Alekseenko (.5)
• Nepomniachtchi (1) - Grischuk (.5)
• Wang Hao (1) - Giri (0)
• Vachier-Lagrave (.5) - Ding (0)

The Grand Chess Tour in Croatia, Round 1: Carlsen, Caruana, So, and Nepo Win

No draw death here! Four of the six first-round games in the new Grand Chess Tour event in Zagreb, Croatia, had a winner. And these were not rapid or blitz games; they were classical contests.

Magnus Carlsen led the way, as one would expect from the world champion, speedily defeating Anish Giri. Giri was too taken on the champion's poor queenside structure and neglected his king's safety. He paid the price, and he paid it quickly.

Fabiano Caruana defeated Hikaru Nakamura thanks to good preparation on his part combined, I suspect, with Nakamura's forgetting his own prep. The players raced through their first 23 and a half moves, and then Nakamura made back to back errors. Caruana played just about perfectly and won convincingly.

Wesley So was a little better against Ding Liren thanks to a slightly better structure and his bishop pair (though the dark squared bishop was relative ineffectual), but Ding's problems only became serious - fatal, even - when his remaining bishop got stranded and then lost.

Viswanathan Anand and Ian Nepomniachtchi had an up-and-down battle. Anand's 12.f3 was perhaps mistaken, but Nepo's reply was even worse. Anand enjoyed a serious advantage, but it quickly slipped away. Anand continued to drift, wound up in a bad queenless middlegame, and then blundered with 30.Be2 (he should have avoided the ensuing pin by taking on f5) and then again with 32.Rg2. It was a very bad day for the former champion.

The other two games were tasty draws. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian played an interesting Berlin ending that wasn't just rattling off computer prep, while Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Sergey Karjakin tested a lively line of the 4.f3 Nimzo-Indian that finished in a repetition.

The games are here (I've annotated Carlsen's and Caruana's wins), and here are the round 2 pairings:

• Carlsen (1) - Anand (0)
• Nepomniachtchi (1) - Caruana (1)
• Ding (0) - Karjakin (.5)
• Aronian (.5) - Giri (0)
• Nakamura (0) - Mamedyarov (.5)
• So (1) - Vachier-Lagrave (.5)

Norway Chess, Round 9: Carlsen Wins the Tournament, but Loses to Caruana

Congratulations to the world champion and to his most recent challenger! Magnus Carlsen had a good tournament overall, just about maintaining his classical rating with a +2 score in the classical games, while winning his first six Armageddons. And congratulations to Fabiano Caruana as well. He went +1 in classical chess and overcame a poor start to finish fourth, just half a point behind Yu Yangyi and Levon Aronian. And, of course, his biggest congratulations comes from beating Carlsen in the last round. He even had a chance to defeat Carlsen in the classical game, which would have been an even bigger feather in his cap, but after missing his chance there he showed excellent technique in the Armageddon game, doing a Carlsen to grind out his great opponent in an ending.

As mentioned, Yu Yangyi tied for second, and he got there by defeating Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in their classical game. Surprisingly, this happened in the Scotch Four Knights, and while Yu didn't get anything with it earlier in the event, this time he was more successful. Mamedyarov didn't play very well, and lost in just 30 moves.

In the other games, Levon Aronian "drew" the Armageddon game with Black against Viswanathan Anand to win their battle. In fact he could have won very easily, but gave a charity draw to finish the match. The end of the game was nice, with Aronian appearing to fall into a trap; of course, he saw a little further and got the last tactical laugh.

Wesley So was in trouble with White against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave early on in their Armageddon game, but a careless move or two by MVL allowed So to flip the script. Given a chance to take over, he did it, and tied with Caruana for 4th-5th.

Finally, Alexander Grischuk drew his Armageddon game with Black against Ding Liren. He was clearly winning early on, and while he let the full point slip away he achieved what he needed with the draw.

The games (without notes) are here; here are the final standings:

1. Carlsen 13.5/18
2-3. Yu, Aronian 10.5
4-5. Caruana, So 10
6. Ding 8.5
7-8. Vachier-Lagrave, Anand 8
9-10. Mamedyarov, Grischuk 5.5

Caruana at the Mechanics' Club

Here's an event you all almost definitely missed: the 2019 Mechanics' Institute Rapid Championship. (HT: Allen Becker) This was set up in conjunction with the PRO Chess League final about a week and a half ago, and featured a strong field that included 13 GMs, including Fabiano Caruana, Sam Shankland, Jon Ludvig Hammer, Georg Meier, and Jon Ludwig Hammer. Caruana, Hammer, and Meier tied for first with 4.5/5; Caruana and Hammer drew each other in the last round, while Meier drew with GM Steven Zierk in round 3 but caught up with wins over Shankland in round 4 and Cristian Chirila in round 5.

The crosstable is here, and at the bottom of that page you'll find a link to download the games. (It's a zip file, which expands to a series of folders divided by rounds. Within each round you'll find separate PGNs for each of boards 1-10, and then the last PGN entry includes all 10 boards. Save yourself some time and start with that one!)