Oslo Esports Cup 2022

The Oslo Esports Cup is the opening event for the 2022 Meltwater Champions Tour, and as you'd expect from last year's Tour it's a very strong tournament. Magnus Carlsen leads the parade of stars, which also includes top-name players like Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Anish Giri, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. It's an eight player round robin, with each round a best-of-four game match with a 15'+10" time control.

Round 1 was on Friday, with these results: 

• Carlsen 2.5 - Duda .5
• Giri 2.5 - Eric Hansen 1.5
• Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (P.R.) 2.5 - Jorden Van Foreest .5
• Mamedyarov 2.5 - Le Quang Liem 1.5 

Many of these results were turned upside down in round 2, on Saturday: 

• Le 2.5 - Carlsen 1.5
• P.R. 2.5 - Mamedyarov .5
• Van Foreest 2.5 - Hansen 1.5
• Duda 4 - Giri 2 

Everyone is 1-1 except for Hansen, who lost twice, and Praggnanandhaa, who has not only won twice but crushed his opponents.

Tournament site here; games here.

Nakamura Wins the 2021 St. Louis Rapid & Blitz

Bit by bit, we creep our way back to the present. The most recently completed major tournament was the 2021 St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, the penultimate event of the 2021 Grand Chess Tour. (The ongoing Sinquefield Cup is the finale.) Now a streamer first (by his own admission) and a bit too low on the rating list to be a full-time member of the Grand Chess Tour, Hikaru Nakamura participated as a wildcard...and dominated. He went through all three round-robins undefeated, scoring 6/9 each time. His 6/9 - or rather, 12/18, as the rapid games counted double - in the rapid was good for a minimal lead over Fabiano Caruana and Richard Rapport. (Both scored 5.5/9 = 11/18.)

His combined 12/18 in the blitz obviously guaranteed overall first, and Le Quang Liem deserves great credit for finishing only half a point behind with 11.5; a remarkable turnaround from his last-placed 6/18 in the rapid portion. Caruana is an inconsistent blitz player at best, but not this time: he finished with a convincing 10/18, good for equal third in that phase (with Leinier Dominguez, who finished next-to-last in the rapid) and a clear second place overall.

With one event remaining in this year's Grand Chess Tour, four players are technically alive in the race for first: Wesley So (28.3 points), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (22.5), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (22), Fabiano Caruana (17). With only 13 points available to the winner of the Sinquefield Cup, Caruana is essentially out of the running - unless So finishes in last while Caruana takes clear first, Caruana can't catch So. Mamedyarov and MVL have a better chance, but So can guarantee first in the Tour by coming in third. At the moment So is tied for first with Caruana at 3/4, while MVL has 2.5 and Mamedyarov has 2. Thus it doesn't look great for the chase pack, but there's still enough time left for things to change.

Anyway, back to the subject: Nakamura isn't in the Sinquefield Cup, but congratulations to him on making great use of his wildcard to win the Rapid & Blitz in very impressive fashion, by a noteworthy three point margin. Congrats to Caruana as well, who had an excellent performance, especially after a series of poor results even in classical. Judging by what has happened so far in the Sinquefield Cup, that result may have given him the shot of confidence he needed.

More Ancient History: So Wins the Chessable Masters

When we left off with the Chessable Masters, part of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, the preliminaries were over and the knockout stage has become. The winner was Wesley So, who defeated Le Quang Liem in the finals to win his third tour event and clinch a spot in the tour Finals.

Here's how the knockout stage of the Chessable Masters worked out. In the quarters, So got in trouble on day 1 against Jorden Van Foreest, drawing game 1 and losing game 2 in just 19 moves. So is nothing if not resilient, and he fought back to win game 3 and held on in game 4 - barely - to draw the first day's mini-match. On day 2, Van Foreest was up against a different player, as So won the first two games and drew the third to win the second mini-match and the match as a whole to advance to the semis.

His opponent was Vladislav Artemiev, who eked out a victory over Hikaru Nakamura. On day 1, all four games were drawn, and on day two the players exchanged wins in the first two games (first Artemiev won with White, then Nakamura returned the favor) before splitting that match as well. In the ensuing blitz playoff Artemiev won game 1 with White, but once again Nakamura fought back to equalize the scores. It came down to Armageddon, and having to win with White the young Russian was up to the task, outplaying the American in a technical ending.

In the other half of the draw, Levon Aronian speedily dispatched Shakhriyar Mamedyarov while Le was even more convincing against blitz prodigy Alireza Firouzja. On day 1, Aronian finished ahead of scheduling with a 2.5-.5 win while Le needed all four games on the way to a 3-1 victory. On day 2, Aronian won game 1, had a hiccup in game 2 when Mamedyarov won his only game of the match, but with a win in game 3 Aronian guaranteed at least a draw in the second mini-match and thus overall match victory, so they were finished. As for Le, he was even tidier: two wins and they were done.

On to the semis. So defeated Artemiev on day 1, winning game 3 and drawing the rest. Artemiev was ready on day 2, winning the first game, but So won game two and drew the rest to take the match. That was tough, but Le vs. Aronian turned out to be even tougher. Le crushed Aronian on day one, winning both white games to take a 3-1 victory, and after a draw and yet another win on day two it looked like a rout. All Le needed was a draw in the remaining two draws to clinch match victory - and he couldn't do it. Aronian won both to force the blitz playoff and then, two draws later, an Armageddon game. This finished in an unfortunate way, with Le winning on time in a completely drawn position on move 69. The reason I add this latter detail is that the tradition in Armageddon games is to award two second increments after move 60, but in the Meltwater tour that feature is absent.

On to the final. So won smoothly on day 1, 2.5-.5, but day 2 was tougher. Le's attack crashed through in round 1 to take the lead, drew a crazy second game, but lost a very interesting third game with the white pieces. (This reversed Noteboom-ish way of meeting the Colle/Zukertort system looks like an excellent approach, even if you don't have a taste for 11...g5.) Le didn't manage to win game 4 with Black - it was drawn - and thus So won the match and the event. (There was also a third-place match. Day 1 was tied 2-2, with Aronian winning game 1 and Artemiev game 4, in both cases with White. On day 2 Artemiev won games 2 and 3 to earn tournament bronze.)

Banter Blitz 2020 Final, Day 5: Carlsen, Le Quang Liem Advance **UPDATED With Match Times**

In what was no surprise at all, Magnus Carlsen steamrolled Anish Giri in the day's first match. He won the first three games before giving up a draw, and after winning game five he finally lost one game. No problem: he won game seven to finish things off with a 5.5-1.5 rout. Next up for Carlsen, a semi-final match with Levon Aronian.

The day's other quarterfinal match looked much less clear on paper, and so the result wasn't surprising, at least not to me. Le Quang Liem was the 2013 World Blitz Champion, and while Fabiano Caruana is the world's #2 in classical chess he rarely looks like a player of that caliber when it comes to blitz time controls. (I don't mean he's weak, obviously. But number two in the world in blitz? No way, not even close. On 2700chess.com, Caruana is #33 in blitz, at least if one only counts the world's top 100 in classical chess. Maybe he moves up or down a few spots in an online context, but at least at this point he's not competing at the same level as the world's best in blitz, most notably Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.)

Le got off to a good start, winning game three after a couple of mostly normal draws. Then everything went nuts. Le was really, really winning in both games 4 and 6, but Caruana somehow survived them. Caruana was winning in game 5 - and also had a momentary chance to win game 6 - but again, everything finished in a draw. Finally, Caruana broke through in game 7 and won, leveling the match at 3.5 points apiece. Maybe this would have broken a lesser player, ruing his missed chances, but it was no problem for Le: he won game 8 in good style. Caruana had a significant advantage in game 9 but let it slip, and some rickety play in the resulting ending gave Le the chance to put an end to the match - which he did. He'll have the pleasure of facing Wesley So in the other semi-final.

I haven't seen a time set for the So-Le semi yet, but Carlsen-Aronian is set for tomorrow (Saturday) at 21:00 CEST = 3 p.m. ET. I would expect a Carlsen-So final, but I think both Aronian and Le could put up a fight if they don't fall into an early hole. Still...make your plans for a Carlsen-So final on Sunday.

Event page here.

UPDATE: The So-Le match is set to start at 20:00 CEST = 2 p.m. ET, with Carlsen-Aronian pushed back half an hour from the original announcement to 21:30 CEST/3:30 p.m. ET.

Le Quang Liem Wins World Blitz Championship

As noted already, the tournament is considerably weaker than usual due to all the high-level classical events going on - the Tal Memorial starts Wednesday and siphoned off Anand, Carlsen, Kramnik, Caruana, Karjakin, Nakamura, Gelfand and Morozevich, for instance, though not Mamedyarov and Andreikin. (They didn't play in the earlier super-tournaments, however, so they probably had more energy to burn.) Despite those high-profile absences, the World Blitz Championship was still very strong, as a perusal of the final crosstable will reveal, and the surprising but convincing winner was the very strong young Vietnamese grandmaster Le Quang Liem. His score of 20.5/30 only gave him a half-point margin of victory over the pursuing troika of Alexander Grischuk (silver), Ruslan Ponomariov (bronze) and Ian Nepomniachtchi (heartbreak), but as he led more or less throughout the tournament his victory was well-deserved. Also performing very well were Le's countryman Ngoc Truong Son Nguyen and Rauf Mamedov, both of whom finished with 19.5 points. (Below them the next finishers had 18 points, so they weren't really in the running for the top prizes.)

Congratulations to Le, who is, if I'm not mistaken, the first male from East Asia to win a non-age-based world championship. One would have expected the Chinese (who didn't participate for some reason) to get there first, but they didn't!

Le Quang Liem and Nepomniachtchi Lead World Blitz Championship

The World Blitz Championship is a 30-round event, or if you prefer a 15-round event with two games per round against the same opponent. It is broken up into two days, with the first 16/8 rounds taking place on Sunday and the last 14/7 on Monday. Sunday's action is over, and Le Quang Liem and Ian Nepomniachtchi are tied for first with 12/16, with the former beating the latter 1.5-.5 in the final match of the day. Ruslan Ponomariov is half a point behind, and then there is a group of four players at 10.5: Ivan Cheparinov, Ngoc Truon Son Nguyen, newly crowned World Rapid Champion Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Rauf Mamedov.

Some great players are present, but most of the world's absolute elite is unfortunately missing, probably due to the very crowded calendar of classical events. A pity, but this has been a very entertaining event all the same.

A Non-Cheating Scandal

The Sophia/Corsica Suggestions, nee Rules, were violated by Vassily Ivanchuk and Le Quang Liem in round 7 of the 2013 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival. According to those "rules", or at least the modified version in use in Gibraltar, players could not agree to a draw before move 30.* Ivanchuk and Le Quang apparently weren't terribly impressed by this, and uncorked the following:

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. cxd5 cxd5 4. Nc3 Nf6 5. Bf4 Nc6 6. e3 a6 7. Rc1 Bf5 8. Nf3 e6 9. Qb3 Ra7 10. Ne5 Nxe5 11. Bxe5 Nd7 12. Bg3 Be7 13. Qd1 O-O 14. Bd3 Bxd3 1/2-1/2

The position is level (and dull), but it's by no means a forced or otherwise dead draw. Clearly the players wanted or were very willing to draw, but even so they could have made eye contact and tacitly gone on to move 30. (A series of exchanges, harmless moves or a long series of repetitions could have done the trick.) Instead, they decided to provoke the arbiters,** who faced a decision. The penalty given in the tournament "regulations" was that the players would have a choice: replay the game from scratch, or suffer a double forfeit. This "rule" was apparently carried out on lower boards.

Our heroes (especially Ivanchuk) being super-GMs, however, it was decided that such fundamental skills as the ability to read the "rules" did not apply to them, and apparently they weren't interested in submitting to them after the fact either. And so an expedient was worked out - here's GM Stuart Conquest on the matter:

We had a long talk with them and they stated that even though the rule is mentioned in the regulations, it was never announced before the rounds. And they are right about that, so tomorrow we will make the reminder to all players at the start of the round.

Indeed. Perhaps they should also mention the touch-move rule (Garry and Zurab might appreciate that), and for that matter they might want to explain how the horsie moves.

Of course, I'm being naive. There is one set of policies for GMs and especially super-GMs, and another one altogether for the rest of us. Therefore, even though no one outside the circle of their friends probably cared at all about the games on the lower boards that prematurely finished in draws and plenty of spectators were interested in the high-rating, high-board fight between Vassily Ivanchuk and Le Quang Liem, the latter was allowed to stand and the former wasn't. (Not to mention that the latter two surely received conditions while the amateurs surely did not.) No matter.

It would be better to end the hypocrisy one way or another. Either turn the "rules" back into rules and apply them to everyone, or eliminate the sham altogether. (I'm still a fan of my old suggestion: when a player who's getting paid to play makes a habit of quick draws, disinvite him and encourage other organizers to do the same.) The Solomonic solution here (ironically, splitting the point!) is slightly absurd.

[HT: Hylen]

* I suppose that means that followers of Sax-Seirawan and Kovchan-Peralta must repeat the sequence ...Be3+ Ke1 Bf2+ Kf2 ten times so the arbiters can be happy.

** A strange species of human being characterized by a talent for getting in the way of the webcams and an inconquerable inability to master the DGT technology at the end of a game.