Carlsen-Firouzja, and More

Last year it was Chess.com that had all the interesting online chess; this year it's Chess24. The Peter Svidler vs. Santosh Vidit match started a few minutes ago, and will be followed by the Pentala Harikrishna vs. Jan-Krzysztof Duda match. There's also an ongoing warm-up match for Anish Giri, against Jorden Van Foreest, helping him prep for the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, which starts on Saturday. And finally, the day and time has been set for the Banter Blitz finale between Carlsen and 16-year-old Alireza Firouzja: it will be on Wednesday (April 15) at 19:00 CEST/1 p.m. ET.

Some Chess Today: The Pepe Cuenca Invitational

In anticipation of the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, which starts this coming Saturday, Chess24 is first holding the Pepe Cuenca Invitational, which started today. (Pepe Cuenca is a Spanish GM and their main Spanish-language commentator. A bit more of him later today, I think.)

Today two matches took place, between Teimour Radjabov and David Anton, and between Vladislav Artemiev and Leinier Dominguez. (Name orders randomized - no spoilers here.) There will be two matches tomorrow, between Peter Svidler and Santosh Vidit, and between Pentala Harikrishna and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Here are today's matches, with live commentary by Svidler himself and Jan Gustafsson:

The Next Big Event: The 2019 Champions Showdown

Hopefully everyone is enjoying Valentine's Day with someone they love. (Unless you're a little kid, in which case all that romantic stuff is icky. For you, be happy - the day is almost done!) Here's some good chess news to go along with your romantic bliss: a very high-level rapid & blitz event starts in less than a week.

It's the 2019 Champions Showdown in St. Louis, and it features the United States' Fab Five (note the extra pun, free of charge) taking on five challengers from the rest of the world (ROW). There will be three days of rapid play and two days of blitz, and these are the matchups:

• Fabiano Caruana vs. Pentala Harikrishna
• Hikaru Nakamura vs. Jan-Krzysztof Duda
• Wesley So vs. David Navara
• Leinier Dominguez vs. Veselin Topalov
• Sam Shankland vs. Richard Rapport

I'm pretty excited about the event, and it will be nice to see Caruana and especially the long inactive Dominguez back in action. I think the Americans will be favorites on every board, though I wouldn't be shocked to see the ROWers win one or two of the first, fourth, or fifth matches.

Here are the specifics:

The event runs from February 20-24, and play each day starts at 1 p.m. local time (= 2 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CET). The first three days will be devoted to rapid chess, the last two to blitz. There will be 12 rapid games - 4 per day - and 24 blitz games - 12 per day. The rapid time control is 15' + 10" (an increment, thankfully, not the abominable Bronstein delay) and the blitz control is 3' + 2". The rapid games are scored 2-1-0, the blitz games 1-.5-0, with the prize money in each match awarding $36,000 to the winner and $24,000 to the loser. If the match finishes in a tie, that's it: the money is split and there's no playoff.

2019 Wijk aan Zee, Round 8: Carlsen, Anand Win and Lead

The logjam at the top has broken up a bit, and now it's the current world champion and his predecessor who head the tournament table in the 2019 edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament with +3 scores. Magnus Carlsen crushed Richard Rapport, obtaining a large positional advantage with he transformed into a powerful kingside attack; while Viswanathan Anand took advantage of Shakhriyar Mamedyarov's blundering not just one but two simple tactics involving the d5 square.

Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi were part of the first-place tie entering the round, but paired with each other they drew speedily, in just 17 moves. Anish Giri was the last member of the pentumvirate(?), but he was never getting more than a draw as Black against Santosh Vidit Gujrathi. Teimour Radjabov trailed the leaders by half a point entering the round, but he too took the round off, also drawing in 17 moves (with Black) against bottom seed and co-cellar dweller (with Vladimir Kramnik, but not any more!) Jorden Van Foreest.

So today's draws were all pretty lame, but this was compensated by the presence of four decisive games. Two have already been mentioned, and the other two were Vladimir Fedoseev's win over Sam Shankland and Jan-Krzysztof Duda's victory over Kramnik, who no longer weighs the same as a duck but is sinking like a stone. (Ask your parents.)

The games are here (with some comments). Tomorrow is a rest day, and on Tuesday they'll contest round 9, with the following pairings:

• Shankland (3.5) - Carlsen (5.5)
• Radjabov (4.5) - Fedoseev (3.5)
• Giri (5) - Van Foreest (2.5)
• Nepomniachtchi (5) - Vidit (4)
• Kramnik (2) - Ding (5)
• Mamedyarov (3) - Duda (4)
• Rapport (3) - Anand (5.5)

It looks like a round that could have lots of decisive games - let's hope so.

Speed Chess Championship: The Grand Finale

I remembered that it was scheduled for after the Carlsen-Caruana match, but didn't remember that it was so soon afterward. The (Chess.com) 2018 Speed Chess Championship took place November 30 through December 2, and it was won by...well, I won't tell you here - if you want spoilers, check out the comments section. What I'll do here is provide some links:

Semifinal 1: Wesley So vs. Jan-Krzysztof Duda: Video here.

Semifinal 2: Hikaru Nakamura vs. Levon Aronian: Video here.

Final Match: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Chess Olympiad, Round 10 Games

Almost to the finish - here is a selection of round 10 games, with my annotations. Do check out the Ding Liren-Jan-Krzysztof Duda game, which has some spectacular variations.

Grischuk-Duda Underway **UPDATED**

The first quarterfinal match of Chess.com's 2018 Speed Chess Championship is underway, pitting Alexander Grischuk and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The 5'+1" portion is finished and has Grischuk taking a 5-4 lead (after all decisive games) heading into the 3'+1" portion. You can find the live stream on Chess.com or at Twitch.tv/chess. Happy viewing!

**UPDATE** The match was incredible, coming down to the very end. If you don't care who won, watch the whole thing; if you do and will be upset if your guy lost, I give the final result in the comments.

Karjakin-Duda and Giri-Mamedyarov

The last two matches of the 1/8-finals of the 2018 Speed Chess Championship are now history, and they were both very good, coming down to the wire. If you didn't watch the matches live but want to see them, without knowing what happened, we're here to serve. The Karjakin-Duda stream can be (re-) watched here, and Giri-Mamedyarov is here.

UPDATE/Bonus: Another Chess.com super-event is underway now as well, the 2018 PRO Chess League All-Star Games. Have a look, but only if it doesn't interfere with your enjoyment of the Notre Dame game.

Dortmund 2018, Round 2

Greetings again, Caissaic comrades! We're back again with Round 2 coverage of Dortmund, with this round featuring a bit more blood than yesterday.

 The game Meier-Giri, however, certainly did not provide any hemoglobin for viewing pleasure. Meier is known for having a very technical style that often verges towards peaceful, and Giri is almost notorious for his ability to force draws and avoid danger. (As an aside, as to the latter, this strikes me as particularly unfair - Giri has a tremendous sense of humour about these aspersions, so he doesn't actively attempt to disperse these barbs, but his rating and results deserve far more than chuckles. He's one of the best players in the world, and 99.9% of players can't even imagine playing up to his level.) Meier (via his usual 1. Nf3 move order) deployed the Catalan, which in my eyes is in need of a major rejuvenation - Black has discovered quite a few equalizing methods against this once feared squeezing weapon, and it's been quite awhile since I've seen Black in any form of trouble in a top level game. The game quickly zoomed towards opposite coloured bishops and an efficient liquidation towards peace.

Nisipeanu-Duda (the Battle of the Hyphenation) finished quickly as well, but with a decisive result. Nisipeanu chose a 3. Bb5+ Sicilian, and the game found its way to one of the biggest traditional main lines of the Rossolimo. Duda was the first to play an offbeat move, with 10...Ng8 being a very strange choice (10...Ne4 is by far the usual choice, with hundreds of master games). I'm not sure if this discombobulated Nisipeanu, but the game took a strategically interesting path - Duda very confidently castled queenside, and the game was set for a fascinating battle with central pressure, dueling outposts, and opposite side pawn storms. Suddenly, however, Nisipeanu dropped a pawn! I'm not sure if this was a sacrifice, or a failure to recognize that 19. b4 g4 20. b5 is an in between move that maintains the balance. Whatever it was, Duda snatched off the pawn and very confidently converted his material edge with zero counterplay.

The most incredible game of the day has to be Wojtaszek-Kramnik. Kramnik took a break from his usual QGD/Semi-Tarrasch adventures to give the Nimzo a try, and Wojtaszek tried a slightly offbeat Bg5/e3 mixture that has recently seen a couple of outings in top flight chess - it is most notorious for featuring in last year's game Bai Jinshi-Ding Liren, which in my eyes was the most beautiful game of 2017 (which I have listed in the game link in the notes, if you haven't partaken of the aesthetic experience). This game took a much more tranquil course, with Kramnik turning the tables on his usual Semi-Tarrasch adventures and taking on an isolated but passed d pawn for himself. The game was following a logical course, with Black perhaps having a slightly better side of a draw...and Kramnik suddenly sacrificed his queen! Kramnik had a high profile explosion of overly optimistic decisions in the recent Candidates tournament (which produced some slightly harsh but hilarious memes), and this decision certainly continues the trend. Neither player handled the resulting imbalance in the most efficient way, and the evaluation pingponged between equal and better for White. Wojtaszek seems to have missed a clear chance for an edge with 41. Qf6 (the move after the time control - a somewhat cursed move number!), and immediately afterwards the players found their way to a repetition.

Finally, the game Kovalev-Nepomniachtchi was another Rossolimo, with White transitioning from a Lopez style structure to a bit of a Meran/c3 Sicilian structure. White never really gained anything from the opening, with his pawns on a5 and e5 allowing outpost squares more than really cramping Black. 26. Nxe6 essentially turned out to be a fancy transmutation of material, with White gaining a knight, rook, and pawn for a queen. I'm surprised Nepo allowed so much liquidation - he very quickly traded into an ending where White has bishop, rook, and two pawns for the queen. There were a couple of moments where Nepo appears to have been in real danger, and Kovalev was always playing "for two results only". Kovalev missed some opportunities to test Nepo more thoroughly, but with a completely open board and the queen's propensity for sudden checking mechanisms (see yesterday's Nepo-Giri game!) making technical progress would have been quite difficult. Peace was agreed to on move 90.

Games here.

Leon 2017, Day 1: So Defeats Duda 2.5-1.5 in the First Semi-Final

Day 1 of this rapid knockout event got off to a strange start, as Wesley So left his queen en prise in the opening against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, not only losing the game but blowing the white pieces as well. In game two he recovered well enough to press most of the game with Black, and then in game three he won to level the match.

It was the fourth game that would decide the match, and it was exciting an exciting contest as Duda went all out for for mate playing with White in a King's Indian Attack. Perhaps he was following Anish Giri's advice, based on his experience in the Chess.com blitz match a month or so ago. Giri initially tried to battle So in positional play, and the strategy failed. So was consistently outplaying him. Then he decided to play for mate, and that approach bore fruit, both in the match and more recently in Leuven.

If this was Duda's strategy, it was working. While So was initially better, whether due to good instincts or good preparation is unknown, but inaccuracies came and his position grew dubious. Unfortunately for Duda, he burned too much time reaching the superior position. After missing several winning opportunities, he took his last (relatively) long think on move 28, and perhaps unable to work out 28.g4 or 28.Nxh7 to his satisfaction, played 28.Ng4. This was a mistake, both objectively and practically, and So had no trouble wrapping up the point and the match after this.

Tomorrow (now today), Viswanathan Anand will take on Jaime Santos in the other semi-final. For now, here are the So-Duda games, with some comments to the first and last games.