Speed Chess Championship: Aronian-Nepo and Caruana-Hou Coming Up This Week

Chess.com's big speed chess event rolls on this week with two more knockout matches. Levon Aronian faces Ian Nepomniachtchi on Wednesday, August 23, at 10 a.m. PDT (= 1 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CET) and on Thursday, August 24 Fabiano Caruana will play against Hou Yifan starting at 3 p.m. PDT (=6 p.m. ET/1 a.m. CET).

For those who haven't seen Chess.com's blitz battles before, here's how they work. The start with 90 minutes of 5'+2", take about a three minute break, play 60 minutes of 3'+2", take one more short break, and then conclude with half an hour of 1'+2". There are extremely brief interviews before the matches, longer interviews afterwards (depending on the quality of the connection and the players' facility with English), and running commentary (often pretty corny) throughout.

Zurich: Four Lead After Three Rounds

The slow rapid/pseudo classical (G/45 minutes + 30 second increments per move) tournament in Zurich has been very entertaining so far, and after three of seven rounds four players are tied for first place with 2/3 (or rather, 4/6, as the tournament prefers 2-1-0 scoring; perhaps they're boycotting fractions and/or decimal points in Switzerland).

Vladimir Kramnik has a win and two draws, and was completely winning against Ian Nepomniachtchi in round 2, up a piece for two very inadequate pawns in an endgame. Nepo kept trying and Kramnik either switched off mentally or chose a poor plan, and the game finished in a draw.

Despite that bit of good luck, Nepomniachtchi was completely winning against Peter Svidler in round 1 and botched it, so two draws instead of a win and a loss came to the same thing. In round 3 he confessed that he would have offered Viswanathan Anand a draw at a certain point, but due to the Sofia rules he had to keep playing, and it paid off when Anand blundered on move 37. (It turns out that he also blundered on move 36, but got away with that one.)

The third amigo is Svidler, who came back from a somewhat precarious opening position against Hikaru Nakamura in round 3 to win. In a promising position Nakamura switched from plan to plan, and after one switch too many found himself under uncomfortable pressure along the c-file. Breaking it cost him a pawn, and in the resulting heavy piece ending Svidler won a second pawn and the game.

Nakamura is the fourth player with two out of three, or four out of six, or 754/1508. He defeated tournament underdog Yannick Pelletier and Grigoriy Oparin in rounds 1 and 2, respectively.

Boris Gelfand has 1.5 points (out of 3), Oparin and Anand have a point apiece, and Pelletier has but a single draw to his credit thus far.

Before the main event began, the players contested a blitz event to determine pairing numbers. Nakamura and Gelfand tied for first with 4.5/7, Kramnik was third with 4 points, and Nepomniachtchi took fourth on tiebreaks over Anand; both had 3.5 points. The importance of this is that it means he - Nepo - gets an extra game with the white pieces in the main event. Oparin was sixth with 3, and Svidler and Pelletier tied for last with 2.5 points apiece. (You can watch the opening ceremony and the blitz tournament here.)

Even before that there was another event - but stay tuned for the next post.

Tal Memorial, Rounds 6 & 7: Nepomniachtchi Back in Front

Round 7 can be dispensed with fairly quickly, as not only were all five games drawn, it doesn't even seem that anyone had even a moderate advantage, except for half a move in the game between Viswanathan Anand and Peter Svidler. After 31...Rc4?! (31...Bf8 was better, and only very slightly in White's favor) Anand had 32.Rxd6!, when Black would have been in some trouble. Instead, 32.c3? left him without an advantage, and the game was drawn shortly after the time control.

Round 6 was another story entirely. Four of the five games were drawn, and the tournament lead changed hands. Ian Nepomniachtchi defeated Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in good style, with the decisive moment coming on move 37. Mamedyarov's 37...Qc5 was as natural as could be (especially if he was in time trouble), overprotecting the knight in anticipation of 38.Qc8 (as played in the game), but it was much better to play 36...Qc3 instead. Black wants to swap off a pair of rooks with 38...Re1+, which also leaves White's king more vulnerable. White would retain excellent chances, but in the game it was just over: 37...Qc5? 38.Qc8 Rxh5 and now White put his second rook to good use with 39.Rxf8+! Qxf8 40.Rd8, winning Black's queen. Black couldn't achieve a fortress afterward, and Nepo got the full point.

The full point, and the lead, because Anish Giri lost to Levon Aronian on the black side of an English. The final position may not seem so bad at first, especially if one thinks that Black is giving up on account of a line like 34...Re8 35.b8Q Rxb8 36.Nxb8. If that represented best play for both sides, Giri certainly would have continued. The problem is that 34...Re8 loses immediately to 35.Ne7+! followed by 36.Nc8, cutting off the rook, while if 34...Rd1+ followed by 35...Rb1 White can again cut off the rook, this time by 36.Nb4. Black can eliminate the b-pawn with 34...Rb8! 35.Nxb8 Nc5, but since he'll be two pawns down after 36.Nc6 Nxb7 37.Nxa7 Giri's resignation was appropriate after all.

Two other games were decisive. Peter Svidler obtained a serious opening advantage on the white side of a Reti against Li Chao and steadily increased it from start to finish. That brought Svidler back to an equal score, while Vladimir Kramnik went to +1 by giving poor Boris Gelfand his fifth defeat in a row. ("Olympic rings", as the joke goes.) Kramnik has been very successful in this event with 1.e4, and this game was no exception. Despite Gelfand's enormous experience in the Najdorf, Kramnik won the theoretical battle and obtained a clear advantage after the opening. Gelfand's 21...Rc6? was the losing move, and while Kramnik could have more easily with different 27th and 28th moves (27.Bxa6 Qxa6 28.Nb4 followed by 29.Qxb6, 30.Nd5+ and 31.Nxb6 was the first improvement, and 28.Bxa6 Qxe4 29.Nd5+! was the second) his approach was good enough. Opposite-colored bishops are sometimes overrated as a drawing weapon, and in this game Gelfand never had a chance to save the ending.

The fifth and last game, between Evgeny Tomashevsky and Viswanathan Anand, finished in a draw.

Two rounds remain; here are the pairings for round 8:

• Kramnik (4) - Tomashevsky (2.5)
• Svidler (3.5) - Gelfand (1)
• Nepomniachtchi (5) - Anand (4)
• Aronian (4) - Li Chao (3.5)
• Giri (4.5) - Mamedyarov (3)

Tal Memorial, Round 1: Nepomniachtchi Beats Tomashevsky; Other Games Drawn

First a quick word about the Tal Memorial blitz, which occurred on Sunday. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was the runaway winner, scoring an undefeated 7.5/9. Levon Aronian finished in second with 5.5 points, and Ian Nepomniachtchi, Peter Svidler, and Anish Giri (in that tiebreak order) tied for third-fifth with 5 points apiece. All five players thereby secured an extra white game in the main tournament. (More on the blitz here.)

Today was time for round 1 of the main event. Only one game had a winner, and one other game should have. The win belonged to Ian Nepomniachtchi, who defeated Evgeny Tomashevsky in a strange game. Nepomniachtchi played the Scotch, which is about as surprising as Peter Svidler dominated a post-game press conference. Nevertheless, Tomashevsky seemed badly unprepared, choosing a seemingly dubious line on move 10. The poor continuations on moves 12 and 13 suggested that his choice on move 10 wasn't part of some deep new idea, and by move 14 he was already lost. Resignation was already reasonable on move 20, and occurred on move 23.

Svidler also seemed headed for a win over Vladimir Kramnik after 17...g5?! 18.Be3 d5?! got Kramnik into trouble and subsequent errors on moves 25 and 30 left him lost. The win wasn't quite trivial though, and in what was probably time trouble Svidler lost much of his advantage. The momentum continued to swing Kramnik's way, and by around move 45 he was the one doing the pressing. It wasn't enough, and the game ended in a draw, as did Aronian-Gelfand, Giri-Anand, and Mamedyarov-Li Chao.

The games, with varying degrees of annotation, are here, and these are the pairings for round 2:

• Kramnik - Li Chao
• Anand - Mamedyarov
• Gelfand - Giri
• Tomashevsky - Aronian
• Svidler - Nepomniachtchi

This Week's World Chess Column: Nepomniachtchi at the Olympics

In my World Chess column this week I take a look at Ian Nepomniachtchi's performance at the Olympiad through round 6, and an impressive performance it is. Nominally the fourth board player for the Russian team, "Nepo" has played every round so far, all but once on board 3, and has won every game - he's 7-0. As the column was finished yesterday, I only cover the first six games, which are all annotated therein. Have a look!

Nepomniachtchi Leads Danzhou With Two Rounds Remaining

Here is an oddity: no one in the Danzhou super-tournament has lost more than two games, and yet one of the players with two losses, Ian Nepomniachtchi, is in clear first with 4.5/7. He lost in round 7, and also in round 2, but won all his remaining games excepting a draw in round 6. Three players are hot on his heels: Bu Xiangzhi, Wang Yue, and Pentala Harikrishna are just half a point behind with two games to go.

World Rapid Championship: Carlsen Wins Again

Surprise! Magnus Carlsen won his first two games today, the third day of the World Rapid Championship. - the second a heartbreaker for Vasil Ivanchuk, who was first better and then for a long time drawing before Carlsen somehow pulled it out - and that put him at a huge score of 10/12. From there three draws sufficed to win the tournament by a full point over his closest competitors. There were three of them, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Teimour Radjabov and Leinier Dominguez, and it was the last-named player who was the unlucky fourth. "Nepo" won the silver on tiebreaks and Radjabov garnered a bronze. Loads of players were another half a point behind, including such greats as Ivanchuk, Vladimir Kramnik Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

The World Blitz Championship starts tomorrow at the same venue and with most of the same players. It would be fun if Hikaru Nakamura and other top players in the Millionaire Open made the flight to Berlin, but that would really be a bit too crazy. Fun, but crazy.

Nepomniachtchi Wins Moscow Blitz Championship

Ian Nepomniachtchi won the Moscow Blitz Championship this past Sunday with a score of 14-5, half a point ahead of Dmitry Andreikin, who won their individual game. There's a nice report on it here, complete with the embedded video of the live coverage. (There's commentary in Russian by Sergey Shipov.)

I've been watching the video, a little at a time, and so far a couple of games have caught my attention. You can replay those games, with my light analysis and comments, here.

Amazing Time Wasters

No, I'm not talking about (more than) 99.99% of the internet, though I could be. Instead, I'm referring to an interesting phenomenon in chess that has increasingly caught my attention of late: moves that appear to waste a tempo in the opening for what seems at first like absolutely no good reason. Further, in most of the cases, the pattern is similar: a piece moves to a square, then a move or so later proceeds to a square it could have reached on the previous turn. I've cataloged five instances of this for you here; readers are invited to offer examples of their own.

World Mind Games Finish: Nepomniachtchi, Hou Yifan "Basque" in Glory (Updated)

(Thank you, thank you; I'll be here all week.) The SportAccord World Mind Games concluded today, and the final stage of the chess competition was won by Ian Nepomniachtchi on the men's side and Hou Yifan on the women's. This last stage was the "Basque" tournament, a five double-round Swiss with each double round with each participant playing a pair of games simultaneously against the same opponent, one with each color.

Both Nepomniachtchi and Hou went undefeated and won their respective sections by a point and a half. "Nepo" scored 7.5/10 while Teimour Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov all wound up with 6. Radjabov won the silver and Vachier-Lagrave added a bronze to his silver medals in rapid & blitz. Alexander Grischuk won both the rapid & blitz events, but only scored 5.5 points here to finish tied for 5th-7th (out of 16), 6th on tiebreak.

In the women's section Hou's score was a dominant 8.5/10, and this time there was no race with Valentina Gunina, who came in 9th with 50%. Alexandra Kosteniuk came in second with 7 points, and Zhao Xue took third on tiebreak with 6 points to beat out Antoaneta Stefanova for the bronze.

The event produced many interesting games for chess fans, and since there aren't any more major events until the Tata Steel tournament (Wijk aan Zee) January 9, you've got a little extra time to catch up on all of them in between Christmas and Hanukah celebrations!

UPDATE:

(1) I see Chess24 used the same lame joke for their title as well. It's hard to resist!

(2) Also from the Chess24 piece: fans of quick play will only have to suffer for 48 hours, as the European Rapid & Blitz championship starts on Friday.

(3) Actually, there's no need to suffer at all if you want to see top-level play, as the final stage of season 7 of the TCEC is underway, with the latest versions of Komodo and Stockfish duking it out once again for silicon supremacy. Komodo dominated the earlier stages while Stockfish looked shaky, but after seven games Stockfish leads 4-3. "Only" 57 games to go.