Candidates, Round 6: Nepo Wins Again, Leads by a Point

It looks like the Class of 1990 is still in charge. Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Dmitri Andreikin were all born that year, and their collective impact on Candidates and World Championship-level play is probably unmatched in the history of the game. (Maybe a case can be made for 1911 - Botvinnik and Reshevsky - or 1937 - Spassky, Portisch, and with a two-month fudge, Tal. But I'm still throwing in with 1990.) Who will play the world champion at the end of this year (assuming, probably wrongly, that there will be a world championship at the end of the year)? The most plausible contender at the moment is Nepomniachtchi, who leads the Candidates by a full point over the second-placed player. Who's that? MVL.

There are still eight rounds left, but Nepo is on the verge of running away with the event. In round six he won his third game of the tournament and second straight, defeating Ding Liren (who lost his third game of the event) in a d3 Ruy Lopez. Nepomniachtchi won a good game, clearly outplaying his opponent, but there were a couple of subtle tactical slips that could have allowed Ding to save the game. He missed them, however, and the Russian player extended his lead in the tournament.

MVL not only failed to keep the pace, but was fortunate not to lose against Wang Hao, who enjoyed a near-ideal ending against the Frenchman's beloved Gruenfeld. Had White won, he would have swapped places with Vachier-Lagrave to take over clear second; instead, he remains in a tie for third at 50%.

There was one winner, Anish Giri, whose grinding against Kirill Alekseenko paid off with a 98-move win. It was a very strange game, as Alekseenko almost seemed to find new ways to get in trouble every time he escaped from his previous troubles. He was a long shot in any case, but this loss probably puts his hopes to an end. As for Giri, he is back to 50% and, as he noted, achieved his first-ever win in a Candidates (he drew all 14 games in 2018).

Finally, Fabiano Caruana once again showed good preparation - this time with Black against Alexander Grischuk - and once again failed to make the most of it. He outplayed Grischuk, who was, as always, in serious time pressure, but an error on move 38 eliminated any winning chances after his opponent's accurate reply. (Games here, with my comments to the three of them.)

Today is the second rest day of the tournament, and tomorrow the first cycle concludes, with the following pairings:

• Caruana (3) - Wang Hao (3)
• Vachier-Lagrave (3.5) - Nepomniachtchi (4.5)
• Ding Liren (2) - Alekseenko (2)
• Giri (3) - Grischuk (3)

MVL vs. Nepo is potentially the game of the tournament. If MVL wins, the tournament is wide open, especially if one or more of the 3-pointers also win. If Nepo wins, Carlsen can start his preparations for November.

Candidates, Round 5: Nepo Wins and Leads; Caruana Barely Survives; Grischuk Wants a Postponement

Alexander Grischuk, sitting on 50% and still very much in the thick of things, said this in the post-game interview:

My form is terrible. I don't want to play at all with this situation. When it was the beginning I didn't have a clear opinion but now already for several days, I have a very clear opinion: that it should be stopped, this tournament. The whole atmosphere is very hostile. Everyone is with masks, also more security and so on.

For me, it's very difficult. I just don't want to play, don't want to be here. Considering this, I am quite happy with my result but overall, it's no coincidence that everything else has stopped. We are the only one left, the only major sport event in the world. I think it should be stopped and postponed.

This seems right to me, but then it seemed right to me before the event as well. And if the event is postponed, how does FIDE justify Radjabov's ouster? It's a mess - but then that's true of the whole situation around the world.

To the games: there was only one decisive game today, but it was a biggie. Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wang Hao, two of the three co-leaders, faced off, and when Nepo won he found himself in clear first. He didn't seem to have anything special on the white side of a Petroff; certainly nothing that impresses the engines. But slight pressure, when it endures long enough, can bear fruit. (This is one reason why players, including amateurs, shouldn't hurry to offer draws in superior positions, even if they have no idea what to do with them. Often your opponents will do your work for you.) Even a Candidate can go astray, and Wang Hao did, missing a key point shortly before the time control. Nepo now leads with a +2 score.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is in clear second after a very entertaining draw with Kirill Alekseenko. It was a super-sharp Najdorf, and MVL seemed to have practically the entire game, with Black, prepared at home. For Alekseenko, it was a matter of discovery from early on. He seemed to find all the right moves (or at least one of the more-or-less correct approaches), but all that did was net him a draw.

Pre-event favorite Fabiano Caruana entered the round at 50%, and was very fortunate to end it the same way. He was at death's door against Anish Giri, and his resilient defense wouldn't have been enough against best play. Luckily, Giri's renowned propensity for draws reigned supreme, and the 2018 challenger is still in the race.

Finally, Grischuk's game with Ding Liren was well-played by both sides, and finished in a correct draw.

The games are here - unannotated for now - and this is what's coming in the morning (assuming the event isn't postponed):

• Grischuk (2.5) - Caruana (2.5)
• Alekseenko (2) - Giri (2)
• Nepomniachtchi (3.5) - Ding Liren (2)
• Wang Hao (2.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (3)

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)

Free ChessLecture Video

ChessLecture.com, as I mentioned more than once when I was blogging regularly last year, offers a free video each week, which is available for two weeks. This is the second week of availability for one of my efforts, an impressive Nepomniachtchi win against the Petroff. You'll need an account to watch the video, and free (though limited) accounts are available there. Here's the link to get you started.

Zagreb GCT, Round 7: Carlsen Beats Nepomniachtchi to Become the Sole Leader

Three players entered the round in first, but only one left that way. Magnus Carlsen began the round sharing first with Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wesley So, and took care of the first one himself while So was lucky to draw with Sergey Karjakin when he got away with a blunder.

Carlsen chose an incredibly ugly-looking structure against Nepo's anti-Sveshnikov line, and even if it wasn't as bad as it looked - as Carlsen himself put it - it's clear that White had the advantage. Still, he couldn't find much to do with it, and when Nepo burned more and more time on the clock Carlsen started to spice things up on the board. The critical moment came when Carlsen played 27...f5. Nepomniachtchi had an hour less on the clock than Carlsen, but his 27 minutes was still more than enough time to work out that 28.exf5 was fine and 28.gxf5?? was losing. He had a blind spot somewhere though, played 28.gxf5, and resigned three moves later. Nothing Carlsen did after 28.gxf5 required Magnus Carlsen at the helm - even I would have found and played those moves - so it's hard to know what happened to Nepo. It's not his track record against Carlsen, as their career score in classical games was 4-0 in Nepomniachtchi's favor. He won their first game back in 2002, in the European U-12 Championship, and won their second-most recent (classical) game in the London Chess Classic in December of 2017. It's 4-1 now. And the turnaround in the tournament must be even harder on him: he started 3-0, and now his score is 4-3.

As for So, he committed a howler with 20...Bd6, completely missing the crushing 21.Rxf5. Luckily for him, Karjakin missed it as well, to his embarrassment and chagrin in the post-game interview with Maurice Ashley. After that the game soon finished in a draw by repetition, and for that matter all the other games ended in draws as well. (So much for the bloodbath in round 6; no trend has begun.)

The games, with my notes to Carlsen's win and a few more details about Karjakin-So, are here. These are the pairings for round 8, headlined by a major matchup:

• Ding Liren (4) - Carlsen (5)
• So (4.5) - Nakamura (2.5)
• Aronian (4) - Nepomniachtchi (4)
• Anand (3) - Caruana (4)
• Giri (2.5) - Mamedyarov (2.5)
• Vachier-Lagrave (3) - Karjakin (3)

Zagreb GCT, Catching Up: Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi, and So Tied for First After Six Rounds

The tournament reached (and passed) the halfway point on Sunday followed by a rest day on Monday. Ian Nepomniachtchi had been the solo leader from early on, and had accounted for most of the action in the tournament up to that point. After the four decisive games in round 1, the next four rounds only produced three more wins in total - and two of them were Nepo's! (The third came in round 5 when Ding Liren ground out a win against Anish Giri.) That's not to say that there wasn't action: there were entertaining games and missed opportunities, just not very many wins.

In round 6 the dam burst, and five of the six games finished with a winner. The most important was Ding Liren's second straight win, this one at Nepomniachtchi's expense. The game was a disaster for Nepo, who was lost by move 19, and Ding never gave him a chance to fight back. Ding had lost in round 1, so even with the back-to-back wins he remains half a point behind Nepo.

Two other players caught up, however, including top dog Magnus Carlsen. After squandering his winning advantage against Viswanathan Anand in round 2 he seemed to struggle, but a win over his old customer Hikaru Nakamura was just what the doctor ordered. His win was convincing, as was Wesley So's butchery of Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Along with Nepomniachtchi, they're all at +2.

Joining Ding Liren in the chase pack half a point behind are Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian. Caruana outplayed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave with Black in a Ruy Lopez, while Aronian won on the white side of the Berlin ending against Sergey Karjakin.

The only draw on the day was Giri-Anand in an Open Ruy Lopez. Giri was better throughout, but never winning thanks to the former champ's sturdy defense.

The games are here, with some notes to the games from rounds 3-5 but none from round 6. (Lest I never get any sleep.) Here are the pairings for round 7:

• Nepomniachtchi (4) - Carlsen (4)
• Karjakin (2.5) - So (4)
• Caruana (3.5) - Giri (2)
• Nakamura (2) - Aronian (3.5)
• Anand (2.5) - Ding (3.5)
• Mamedyarov (2) - Vachier-Lagrave (2.5)

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)

Moscow Grand Prix, Round 4, Day 3: Nepomniachtchi Wins Playoff and the Event

Congratulations to Ian Nepomniachtchi, who survived a lot of bad positions in the event and finally wound up winning it, defeating Alexander Grischuk in the final. After draws in their classical games, it was time for a rapid playoff yesterday/today (Wednesday). Grischuk had White in game 1, and while he somehow managed to achieve a slight advantage against the Petroff with the ultra-dynamic 3.d3 (/sarc), Nepo was able to defend fairly comfortably. 26...a5! was the clincher, assuring himself of sufficient play to draw.

In game 2 the players contested an Italian Game, and although Grischuk equalized he made a fundamentally wrong choice on move 16 (and again on move 18). Had he parted with the bishop, I think he would maintained objective equality and a position that was fairly easy to handle. He instead kept the bishop and wound up with an offside knight that cost him the game. That initial decision was not fatal - further errors were required - but it was objectively mistaken and sowed the seeds of the subsequent loss.

Official site here, games (with my notes) here; what follows are the Grand Prix points each of the players earned. Note, importantly, that players who won their matches in the classical portion, without needing rapid playoffs, gained an extra point for each such match victory. That's why two players who left in the same round can have differing Grand Prix point totals.

1. Nepomniachtchi 9
2. Grischuk 7
3. Wojtaszek 5
4. Nakamura 3
5-7. Svidler, Wei Yi, Dubov 2
8. So 1
9-16. Giri, Mamedyarov, Aronian, Radjabov, Karjakin, Vitiugov, Duda, Jakovenko 0

Moscow Grand Prix, Round 4, Day 2: Another Draw; Playoffs Tomorrow

It was a short draw in a 5.Re1 Berlin, but there was some content. Ian Nepomniachtchi had White, and he was well-prepared for Alexander Grischuk's use of a recent Vladimir Kramnik idea. Nepo obtained an edge, but bit by bit it slipped away. Grischuk even started thinking about playing for the win himself, but short on time and not seeing a way to make meaningful progress decided to call it a day.

Tiebreaks tomorrow; meanwhile, here's today's game, with light notes.

Moscow Grand Prix, Round 4, Day 1

The final match between Alexander Grischuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi is underway, and game 1 is in the books as a draw. Nepomniachtchi played a (seemingly) risky line of the Gruenfeld, but as he was better prepared he was the one trying to push for an advantage from early on, despite playing with the black pieces. Grischuk played well, first securing the queenside and then the kingside, and the players agreed to a draw just before the time control. (The game, with my brief notes, is here.) The second classical game takes place tomorrow/today (Tuesday), and if it's another draw the rapid (and, if necessary, blitz) playoffs will be Wednesday.