Round 13 of the 2022 Candidates: Nepo Clinches First; Nakamura in Solo Second

(Originally published here several days ago. If any of you haven't yet subscribed to the Substack blog, please do so!)

The question for round 14 of the Candidates is this: will there be one meaningful game, or none? The answer is up to none of the players, but to Magnus Carlsen. More on this below.

First things first: congratulations to Ian Nepomniachtchi! After another pro forma draw, this time against Richard Rapport, he clinched clear first in the tournament with a round to spare (which he did in the last Candidates, too), and guaranteed himself a World Championship match against…somebody. Hopefully Carlsen, but if he decides not to play it will be against the second-place finisher in this event.

Right now, that’s Hikaru Nakamura. He won against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, but it was a game he easily could have lost. After the careless 31.Rfd1 he was in grave danger after 31…Bg5 32.Rd3 b5!; fortunately, after 33.Ba3 Duda uncorked a howler. His 33…d5?? gave away his advantage, and a few moves later 37…Nd7?? lost the game. That brought Nakamura to +2 in the tournament for the first time, a point and a half behind Nepo and half a point ahead of Ding Liren.

Ding gave it his best shot against Alireza Firouzja, who played uncharacteristically solid chess today. (Losing two straight and barely surviving the third game can do that to a player.) Firouzja’s decision to go pawn-grabbing after Ding’s provocative 20…h5 heated things up, but after very good play by both sides the game finished in a repetition.

Finally, the game between Teimour Radjabov and Fabiano Caruana could have been kept the player in the hunt for second, had either man won. Caruana tried a sharp line against Radjabov’s Catalan, and while both players wanted more it soon petered out to a drawn ending, leaving both players eliminated from contention once Nakamura won.

So we’re left with only one (potentially) meaningful game tomorrow, with Ding having White in a must-win situation against Nakamura. If Ding wins, he’ll have play Nepomniachtchi for the title; otherwise, Nakamura will play Nepo for the title. (Unless Carlsen decides to play, in which case it’s Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi II, when we hope that the sequel will be better than the original. Fortunately this is real life, not Hollywood, so it probably will be.)

Here are today’s games, with my comments, and here are the pairings for the final round, to be played on Monday:

Rapport (5.5) - Radjabov (6.5)

Caruana (6.5) - Firouzja (5)

Ding (7) - Nakamura (7.5)

Duda (5) - Nepomniachtchi (9)

Round 10 of the 2022 Candidates: The Battle for First May Be (Almost) Over, But the Race For Second Is a Mess

(Originally posted on my Substack blog; please subscribe there.)

I remember reading Vik Vasiliev’s biography of Tigran Petrosian when I was a kid, and his account of the 1962 Candidates came to mind. With five rounds to go, he was tied with Paul Keres for first and was, I think, a point ahead of Efim Geller. In the remaining five rounds, he made five draws - the prearranged draws with Keres and Geller, then with Pal Benko and Bobby Fischer, and finally in the last round a 14-move non-effort - with White - against tournament tailender Miroslav Filip.

My recollection is that this unambitious strategy in the last rounds, particularly the last round, when a Keres win against Fischer would have forced a playoff, was defended by Petrosian. My recollection is that he believed his rivals would crack under the pressure, and in the end they did. For Geller, the cracking had already taken place, and he only closed the gap in the last round with a win over Benko, while poor Keres, who had gone 7-0 against Benko in their previous Candidates games (4-0 in 1959, and 3-0 in the first three cycles in 1962), lost to Benko in the penultimate round and then failed to cash in an advantage against Fischer in the final round. One shouldn’t be too quick to draw conclusions based on results: a bad strategy will sometimes pay off, and a good strategy might not. But his hypothesis seems to have been a reasonable one, especially given Keres’ sad track record of cracking at the end of Candidates’ tournaments.

So, why do I bring this up? It’s because Ian Nepomniachtchi seems to have adopted Petrosian strategy in the second cycle of the current Candidates tournament. After finishing the first cycle with a 5.5-1.5 score, he decided to play with absolutely minimal risk against Ding Liren, despite having the white pieces and a massive 2.5-point lead over his then-winless opponent, and even though his closest rival, Fabiano Caruana, was only half a point behind and would have White against him the very next day. And it worked out, as Nepo got an easy draw and lots of rest for the next round, while Caruana lost a six-hour game to Hikaru Nakamura. In the next round, Nepo was in trouble against Caruana, but the best way was not easily found, and Nepo escaped with a draw.

And that brings us to round 10. Despite having the white pieces against one of the tailenders and bottom seeds, Teimour Radjabov, he again played unambitiously and finished his day before the time control; in fact, were it not for the Sofia Rules, White could offered the draw on move 26.

This would seem a foolish decision, especially coming after a rest day. While Caruana, still a point behind Nepo, was due for Black in today’s round, his opponent was Jan-Krzysztof Duda: the bottom seed, in last place, and the only player left in the tournament who hadn’t won a game. Guess what? Yes, you guessed it: Duda won. And it’s not that Duda played great chess, either. At times he played well, but there were other stretches where he played poorly. But Caruana seemed punch drunk, playing terribly from late in the opening throughout the middlegame. It was by far his worst game of the tournament, and this second loss in three days leaves him a point and a half behind Nepomniachtchi with only four rounds to go. Worse still, he has company.

When Nakamura beat Caruana in round 8, he closed to within half a point of his fellow American, but then a loss to to Radjabov in round 9 left him a full point behind him once again. Today he recovered well, obliterating Alireza Firouzja, who took way too many chances in the opening and never recovered.

But wait, there’s more. Ding Liren won his second straight game, defeating Richard Rapport in a thrilling game with the black pieces. Rapport played fighting, imaginative chess, but Ding played just as well. In the end, Rapport made just one substantial mistake - and it wasn’t an obvious one - and wound up losing an opposite-colored bishop ending by a narrow margin.

As a result, Ding is part of a three-way tie for second with Caruana and Nakamura, and as I mentioned previously, this is significant because if Magnus Carlsen decides he doesn’t want to spend another three weeks looking at Nepomniachtchi in a world championship match, it seems that the upshot will be a match between Nepo (assuming he wins the tournament) and whoever comes in second.

About this tie for second, there’s a sad irony. In my preview post on the Candidates, I expressed my happiness about FIDE’s decision to hold a playoff in case of a tie for first, instead of settling it by tiebreaks like Sonneborn-Berger. A tie for first seems very unlikely at the moment, but if there’s a tie for second that tie will be determined by tiebreaks rather than a playoff. It’s irrelevant if Carlsen plays Nepo (or whomever), but all-important if he abdicates. Let’s hope that neither “if” comes to pass: that there will be no tie for second and that Carlsen will play against the winner of the Candidates.

Here are today’s games, with my annotations, and here are the pairings for round 11:

Nakamura (5.5) - Rapport (4)

Firouzja (4) - Nepomniachtchi (7)

Radjabov (4.5) - Duda (4)

Caruana (5.5) - Ding (5.5)

Round 8 of the 2022 Candidates: Nakamura defeats Caruana; Now It's a Three-Man Race?

(Originally published on my Substack blog; please subscribe there.)

What is special about New Year’s Day? Objectively, nothing at all. There’s no scientific reason for the year to start 10 days after the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice, and even if there were, it wouldn’t give that day any magical powers. And yet the day has a powerful effect on most of us: we sense the opportunity for a new beginning, and most of us make resolutions to improve ourselves in various ways in the new year. And it’s not just January 1 that has that effect on us. Our birthdays often function similarly, and we might use an anniversary, the start of a new month, or even the start of a new week as the occasion for a fresh start. In traditional Christian churches, Lent and Advent can have that function, and in Judaism there’s Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, not to mention the Sabbath (or each Sunday for many Christians). Other religions have their days where the believer is encouraged to review their lives and make changes.

Interestingly, the occurrence of a milestone can lead to profound changes, even when the milestone has no religious or moral significance whatsoever, and even more remarkably, when the individual has no intention or desire to make a change. An example that comes to mind is the All-Star break in baseball. It has frequently happened that a player who had a great first half of the season performed far worse in the second half, and the reverse is true as well. One obvious explanation is regression to the mean, but my understanding is that it goes beyond that. Regression to the mean should in theory happen all the time, but it occurs far more often at the All-Star break, and often to a greater degree than one would expect.

This Candidates tournament didn’t have its “All-Star break”, but the last one did, and it made a difference. Ian Nepomniachtchi had time to forget about his loss to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave at the end of the first cycle and came back strong when the event resumed a year later. MVL did not manage to maintain his momentum, while Ding Liren went from -2 in the first cycle back to an even score overall in the second.

So what about this one? There was no break, but there is still something about the idea of having a second cycle. It’s a fresh start. Yes, the first cycle ended just one day ago and yes, those scores still count. Still, rather than seeing it as round 8 of the Candidates, one can see it as round 1 of a new round-robin, and in that way put the first part of the tournament in the past.

I think it is with that in mind that Nepomniachtchi, with the white pieces, went for a draw from move 1 against Ding Liren. With extremely rare exceptions, the Scotch Four Knights is not an opening one GM plays against another - to say nothing of a game between super-GMs - when trying to win. It is safe to the point of stodginess, an attempt to keep the odds of a draw around 90% while hoping for perhaps the very slightest of nibbles. And this was not a case where Nepo had something clever prepared: the players followed known theory for 21 moves, when Ding varied from one of his own games. He easily drew that one, and he easily drew this one.

So why did Nepo throw away a white game against a player who, though great, was also near the bottom of the tournament, with a winless -1 score? My suggestion is that it’s because this was round 1 of a new tournament, and Ding’s discouragement about his play in the first cycle could be erased with an opportunity at the start of the brand new second cycle. Discretion was the better part of valor against the pre-tournament top seed. The safe draw kept Ding from “waking up”, and guaranteed that at worst he would enter the next round tied with Fabiano Caruana for first, going into their game.

Instead, it worked out even better: he finished his game quickly, while Caruana lost a six-hour game against Hikaru Nakamura. (It was a fresh start for Nakamura, while Caruana’s momentum from the first cycle disappeared.) Caruana’s approach was exactly the opposite of Nepo’s. Where Nepomniachtchi was cautious as White, Caruana chose an extremely risky line with Black. I don’t think Caruana’s choice of the Dilworth was a good one against this opponent, especially but not only in this situation, and I felt this way the second I saw the variation on the board. (See the analysis file for a significant elaboration of this point.) Caruana achieved a good position, but Nakamura was far more adept at handling it, and White was soon winning. Nakamura probably could have won the game swiftly had he played 39.Be8, but was instead forced to continue for another two+ hours thanks to Caruana’s resilient defense. Still, he persevered and never let the win slip, and now he’s just half a point behind Caruana, who is a point behind Nepomniachtchi.

The hitherto winless Richard Rapport also gained a full point in a lively game that would probably have been included in Vladimir Kramnik’s censure had the interview been done a couple of days later. Rapport’s attacking play in the opening was ill-founded, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda enjoyed a significant advantage early on. Unfortunately for Duda, his defensive play was quite poor, and he was soon blown off the board. Now Rapport is back to 50%, and can entertain some slight hopes of success.

The last game, between tailenders Alireza Firouzja and Teimour Radjabov, went even longer than the Nakamura-Caruana game. Firouzja was better through most of this 93-move monster, that went more than seven hours, but finally Radjabov managed to fully equalize and force Firouzja to play for the draw. Even they played with more optimism than their last-place standing would lead us to expect, so - perhaps - the psychological magic of the fresh start affected them as well.

Two addenda. First: at the end of the paragraph on the Rapport-Duda game, I suggested that Rapport “can entertain some slight hopes of success”. You may interpret this as a statement about his chances of taking first, which are slight indeed. However - and I don’t know if this is speculation or what will happen if the situation comes up - but I’ve heard talk that if Carlsen does indeed refuse to defend his title the top two finishers in the Candidates will play the World Championship match. If so, then Duda and Nakamura don’t have to overtake Nepo; it would suffice for them to overtake Caruana (while staying ahead of each other).

Second: That makes tomorrow’s (Monday’s) game between Caruana and Nepomniachtchi both less important and more important than it would otherwise be. It’s less important for Nepo, in that he could still end up in, say, a World Championship match with Caruana even if he lost the game and finished in the American’s wake. Likewise, a draw wouldn’t be fatal to Caruana’s chances of coming second and achieving the same sort of match. However, the game is more important in that the results could prove enormously useful to Nakamura and Duda in the race for second. (And if Nepo loses, Nakamura is by no means out of the chase for first.)

And so this speculation-filled post comes to an end. Here are today’s games, with my comments, and here are the round 9 pairings:

Firouzja (3) - Rapport (4)

Radjabov (3) - Nakamura (4.5)

Caruana (5) - Nepomniachtchi (6)

Ding (3.5) - Duda (3)

Round 2 of the 2022 Candidates Tournament: Nakamura Wins, Caruana and Rapport *Almost* Win

(Originally posted here, last night. Please subscribe to my Substack blog, where my posts will be published first.)

There was only one win today, in round 2 of the 2022 Candidates tournament, but the games were no less exciting or hard-fought than they were yesterday.

The marquee matchup was between the two leaders, who were also the winners of the last two Candidates tournaments. With White, one might have expected Ian Nepomniachtchi to put the pressure on Fabiano Caruana; the reality was entirely the opposite. Caruana’s remarkable novelty, 10…Ng4, invited mind-boggling complications, had White chosen 11.Re2 Qf6 12.d4. (I analyzed this variation in detail, with an assist from my friend Alex Herrera. If you look at no other chess today, do look at that analysis. The variations - and I’m sure that Team Caruana had worked all of them out, and more, before the game - are breathtaking.) Nepo sidestepped 12.d4 for only slightly calmer variations, sacrificing first one pawn and then another to build a kingside attack. Caruana played more or less perfectly up until Nepo’s 30.Bb2, but short of time (and probably understandably nervous about the complications) decided against the critical 30…Rxb2. As far as I can tell, Black is winning there, but it’s not simple at all, especially without a lot of time to work things out. He therefore allowed a repetition, and the pre-round leaders exited the round the same way.

One player won, but since he - Hikaru Nakamura - had lost in round 1, this only brought him back to 50%. His victim was Teimour Radjabov, and the game was a long one that went back and forth between Nakamura having a serious advantage to Radjabov achieving equality. This happened so many times that the recap would be as long as the analysis. So have look there; all I’ll say here is that it was a tribute to Nakamura’s doggedness that he pulled out the win.

The sanest game of the day was between Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Ding Liren. Ding “won” the first half of the game, but after his 23…g5? it was Duda who was pressing. His 34.Bd2?! seemed a bit careless, and after 34…f5! Ding equalized. Ding could have played more ambitiously near the end, but seemed set on making a draw, which was agreed just after the first time control.

Finally, Alireza Firouzja turned 19 today, but Richard Rapport very nearly gave him the worst possible “present”. The opening was slightly bizarre, with Rapport’s 9.c5 creating a position with a striking resemblance to the position he suffered against Duda (with reversed colors) in round 1. Rapport outplayed Firouzja and had a winning double-rook ending, but he failed to convert. The win was never obvious, but I’ve found three moments (technically four, but that’s because one of the positions was repeated) where White could have won. In the end, Firouzja avoided a loss on his birthday, and while his play in the first two rounds has been shaky, he has survived, is still just half a point out of first place, and has gotten two of his black games out of the way.

The games, with my analysis, are here. These are the pairings for round 3, tomorrow (Sunday):

Ding (.5) - Rapport (1)

Caruana (1.5) - Duda (1)

Radjabov (.5) - Nepomniachtchi (1.5)

Firouzja (1) - Nakamura (1)

New Yorker Profile of Hikaru Nakamura: The Most Popular Chess Streamer on Twitch

"I don't care" as the secret of success? Have a look.

So Wins Berlin Grand Prix

It was a great event and Grand Prix series for Hikaru Nakamura. He won the series and qualified for the Candidates, but a loss to Wesley So in the rapid playoff today means that his compatriot won this particular Grand Prix event while knocking Nakamura into second on the rapid rating list - he had passed Magnus Carlsen earlier in the event to take first place. (He remains in first place in blitz, though, with Carlsen second and So in third.)

To the chess: they drew their classical games, and moved on to a rapid tiebreak. The first game of the tiebreak was also drawn, and then So won the second and final game of that playoff, grinding Nakamura down from the white side of a 5.Re1 Berlin. Here's the game, with my notes.

How Nakamura Qualified for the Candidates

This isn't the whole story, but its end - or rather, the end of the part that brought Hikaru Nakamura across the threshold, enabling him to qualify for the Candidates for the second time in his career. (The first time was in 2016.) Four players were still in the running for a Candidates slot going into the last game of pool play (the winners of the four pools go on to the knockout stage): Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Leinier Dominguez, Levon Aronian, and Nakamura. MVL was in Pool C, Dominguez in Pool B, and the two Americans, Nakamura and Aronian, were in Pool A.

MVL needed to defeat Sam Shankland to keep his hopes alive, but despite his excellent prep (paying careful attention to obscure email games!) Shankland defended like a boss and drew the game.

Dominguez would have retained a chance with a win or even a draw against Vincent Keymer, but a big tactical error in a worse position led to his getting knocked out of the hunt.

That left Nakamura and Aronian, who were tied for the lead in group A. Nakamura and Aronian had Black against Esipenko and Oparin, respectively, and they both got into trouble as well. Aronian in particular had a terrible game, losing speedily and brutally to Oparin. Oparin now led the group with 3.5 points, and with Esipenko on the attack might have won it. Esipenko missed a subtle chance to win, but still retained equality almost to the end of the game; had he done so, Oparin and Nakamura would have contested a playoff. Instead, Esipenko erred in probable time trouble, and Nakamura pulled out the win - of the game, the Pool, and of a Candidates spot, along with Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

Here are those four critical games, with my comments.

Vachier-Lagrave Wins World Blitz Championship in a Playoff vs. Duda; Firouzja Third

As with the Rapid, so with the Blitz: the event finished in a tie with more than two players, and so the "extra" players - or in this case, extra player, singular - was left out of the playoff. Alireza Firouzja was the unfortunate third wheel this time, while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Jan-Krzysztof Duda went to battle for the title of World Blitz Champion (and perhaps unofficially, the title of the strongest player with a hyphenated name).

The playoff began with a pair of blitz games: both drawn. In many events the next stage is an Armageddon battle, but not here. Instead, the players were to contest as many games as needed until one of them won a single game; in other words: "sudden death". That places a significant premium on luck: if one is fortunate enough to win the toss to get the white pieces first, they may very well win their white game without the opponent's getting a chance for his own white game. And that's just what happened: MVL got White, won, and that was it.

Having skipped to the end of the story, let's go back to its beginning - at least the beginning of the day's goings-on. The first noteworthy event was a non-event: Hikaru Nakamura no-showed against Daniil Dubov, self-quarantining after testing positive for COVID. As for the players who did participate, the day 1 leader, Levon Aronian, started off in terrific form and increased his lead. He defeated Bassem Amin in round 13 (the first round of the day), and after draws with Arjun Erigaisi and Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Anish Giri in good style. With five rounds to go he was in the driver's seat, leading Dubov by a full point and everyone else by even more, but then everything went awry. He lost a clearly won game against Vachier-Lagrave, and while he remained in clear first by half a point things got worse. He overpressed against Haik Martirosyan and lost, and then lost to Vladislav Artemiev as well. Remarkably, a win over the very young, very talented Javokhir Sindarov put him into a six-way tie for first entering the last round, but he lost to Firouzja.

As for Firouzja, he came on like a mac truck at the end, winning his last five games and seven of his last eight, but his slow start left him in trouble when it came to tiebreaks.

Another player who entered the last round tied for first was Dubov, who had in fact been leading going into the penultimate round, when he lost with white to Firouzja. In the last round he again had White, against Giri (who was a point behind), but incredibly offered him a draw after eight moves, which was accepted. As for Giri, he was in good shape after defeating Magnus Carlsen in round 15, but then he lost to Aronian in round 16 and then drew his last five games.

Carlsen was not part of the tie; he was half a point back entering the last round. That was impressive, considering that he started the day a point and a half out of first and started today's action rather poorly. He began with a win over Parham Maghsoodloo, but then drew with Martirosyan and then lost twice, first to Giri and then to Alexander Grischuk. At that point he was three points back, but that was when Aronian started losing. Carlsen scored 3.5 out of his next 4, capped by a win against Nepomniachtchi. In the last round, he was defeating MVL - which would have meant a playoff between Firouzja and Duda - but he slipped on one last banana peel, allowing his desperate opponent to force mate.

Duda was of course part of the tie for first entering the last round, as was his opponent, Vladislav Artemiev. If anything, Artemiev had an even worse start in the event than Firouzja, beginning with just half a point out of three. He righted the ship on day with a run of 7/8, and was undefeated today heading into the last-round game with Duda. Unfortunately for the young Russian, that final game was a bit of a disaster, and Duda - who won his last three games and seven of his last eight - made it into the playoff.

Finally, MVL. He got off to a decent score in the early rounds, going +4 from his first eight games, but then he lost in rounds 9 and 10 to Amin and Maghsoodloo, respectively. From then on he went undefeated. He won his last two games on day one, and then mostly alternated wins and draws today. He beat Boris Gelfand in round 13, drew Giri in round 14, beat Sindarov in round 15, drew with Martyn Kravtsiv in round 16, beat Aronian and Erigaisi in rounds 17 and 18, drew Dubov and Artemiev in rounds 19 and 20, and then won - swindled! - Carlsen in that critical last round battle.

Congrats then to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave for winning the blitz world championship, to Nodirbek Abdusattorov for winning the rapid world championship, and to Magnus Carlsen for not having persuaded anyone to join him in devaluing the classical world championship. (At least not to the extent that anyone would consider Abdusattorov or MVL some sort of co-champion.) Thus despite his best rhetorical efforts, 99.99+% of the world still considers him the world chess champion, and rightly so.

The Chess.com Speed Chess Championship Final: Nakamura Crushes So 23-8

Since there wasn't any drama to spoil, there's little reason to hide the results. Hikaru Nakamura won his fourth consecutive Chess.com Speed Chess Championship, and while his match with Ding Liren was incredibly close and dramatic, going to Armageddon, this was simply a rout. Nakamura only led by two points after the five-minute portion, but the rest was a massacre.

If you're wondering about your next "fix", good news: there's already a top-level rapid and blitz event underway. The Vugar Gashimov Memorial started over the weekend and includes Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana, Sergey Karjakin, and Richard Rapport as its leading lights. And that is in turn a mere prelude to the Rapid & Blitz World Championships, which take place in Warsaw starting the day after Christmas. (Or more precisely, on the second day of Christmas.)

The Speed Chess Championship: The Nakamura-Ding Liren Semifinal

This, my friends, was a great match. If you didn't see it, but have even a little interest in doing so, please do so. I won't offer any spoilers. (I'll identify the winner in the comments.) The final of the 2021 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship, between Wesley So and today's winner, will take place on December 19; the time, as far as I know at this moment, remains to be determined.