Carlsen's Pro League Chess Games

As mentioned earlier today, the 2018 season of the PRO Chess League is underway today - and still going (Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is the strongest player in action at the moment) - and among those players in action there's the world champion. Magnus Carlsen decided that the value of his rest day at Wijk aan Zee was in part that it allowed him to play for his team. It paid off: his team won the match, and Carlsen himself went 4-0. His games, with brief notes to his third game, are here.

Wijk aan Zee 2018, Round 2

I won't offer a full summary of the round 2 action, but here are the games, some of which have been annotated for your entertainment and instruction. Rounds 3 and 4 will gradually make their appearances as well.

If you can remember all the way back to round 1, there were three winners: Giri, Kramnik, and Anand. The first two faced off, and while Giri has generally been one of Kramnik's customers, in this round the roles were reversed. Giri had all the fun, and Kramnik collapsed badly before the end of the time control. The world champion notched his first (and through round five, only) victory of the event against Adhiban. Adhiban plays lively chess, but perhaps hoping for a solid draw against the world champion played the Scotch Four Knights with White. Carlsen equalized without any problem, and when Adhiban failed to play 25.c3 his position fell to pieces. The third winner on the day was Mamedyarov (at the moment the world's #2 player); he defeated Hou Yifan (who is having a terrible tournament with just half a point out of five). I didn't analyze this last game, but did offer some comments on the marathon battle between Wei Yi and Svidler. Wei Yi was on the verge of winning, but a moment of carelessness allowed the 45-time Russian champion to eke out a draw. (Yes, I'm exaggerating; he has "only" won eight Russian titles.)

Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship: The Winner Is..

...to be announced in the comments. The video, for those who didn't see it live but want to watch the video, should be available at twitch.tv/chess.

Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship Finale, Carlsen vs. Nakamura Starts Tomorrow/Today (Wednesday)

The grand finale of the 2017 event begins Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. PT, which is 1 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. CET. Magnus Carlsen is the favorite, of course, but if anyone can stop him in online blitz and bullet it's Hikaru Nakamura. For those who haven't followed any of the Chess.com events, it will transpire in three stages: 90 minutes of 5'+2", 60 minutes of 3'+2", and 30 minutes of 1'+1", with each segment punctuated by a Chess960 game at that time control.

More info here.

Magnus Carlsen's Day 2 of the World Blitz Championship

As promised, here are Carlsen's games from the second day of the World Blitz Championship. Except for a poor game against Vladislav Artemiev (which he won anyway), his play was exceptionally good all day, and not only in contrast with his play on day one. These are respectable, even impressive games by almost any standard!

Magnus Carlsen's Day 1 of the World Blitz Championship

I've been going through the games of the World Blitz Championship - as in all of them(!) - and will present a selection over the course of three posts. In this post, we'll have a look at Carlsen's games from day 1. His score wasn't very good, and it could easily have been worse, as you can see here. Next up, we'll have a look at his games from the second day, when his results were fantastic, and in the third post we'll take a look at selected highlights from the remaining games.

Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship: The Finalists are Set

The second semi-final of Chess.com's Speed Chess Championship is over, and we now know who will face Magnus Carlsen in the final, set for January 3 at 1 p.m. ET. It was a close match, and for those who didn't see it live but want to watch the replay (go to twitch.tv/chess and look up the Nakamura-Karjakin match) without any spoilers I'll put the recap in the comments section.

2017 London Chess Classic, The Finale: Caruana Wins After a Playoff with Nepomniachtchi; Carlsen Wins Grand Chess Tour

The draw ratio was heavy early on, but the tournament finished with a good number of decisive games. In the last round, three of the five games finished with a winner, and two of them were of great consequence.

Entering the round, Ian Nepomniachtchi led the tournament by half a point over Fabiano Caruana, while Magnus Carlsen retained a very slight lead over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the overall Grand Chess Tour standings. Vachier-Lagrave entered the round half a point ahead of Carlsen, and in the basic case needed to extend that lead by at least another half a point to leapfrog Carlsen to achieve Tour victory.

Unfortunately for the part of the plan that was in his hands, he had Black against Nepomniachtchi, and the two called it a day after just 19 moves. Thus both left their fates in their rivals' hands: Nepo needed Caruana to not win against Michael Adams, and MVL needed Levon Aronian to beat Carlsen. For quite a while it looked like they would both get their wish. Despite having the white pieces, Caruana was slightly worse or at best equal against Adams for a long time, and even implicitly offered a draw by repetition. Adams hadn't had a good tournament, and wasn't really better at that point, but he decided to play on anyway. It proved to be a bad idea: shortly before the time control Adams made a few inaccuracies, and in the second time control lost a difficult pawn-down ending with queens and rooks, then just rooks. By catching up to Nepo, Caruana forced a playoff - more on that below.

As for Carlsen, he was in trouble against Aronian, but he found a very nice, long blockading idea that got him out of most of his trouble. Unfortunately for Aronian, he continued with excessive ambition, first giving away his advantage in pursuit of an interesting piece sac, and then going from drawn (by taking twice on d6 starting at move 39) to lost.

Those were the most important games of the round, and there was a third victory as well. Wesley So defeated Viswanathan Anand with the black pieces, though it wasn't so much a win with Black as it was the opportune exploitation of a big tactical error or two. With Adams, Aronian, and Anand all losing today, it looks like triple-A was the tow-ee today rather than tower. And a strange feature of the tournament is that Black outscored White - as recently happened in St. Louis - provided the playoff isn't taken into account.

First though, the round's other game was a draw between Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura. Neither had a great tournament, but what really matters for Karjakin is his form next March in the Candidates tournament.

On to the playoff: Caruana and Nepomniachtchi began with a pair of very well-played draws at g/10 (plus a five second Bronstein delay). With loads of time to rest and prepare it was thought that Nepo would have a significant advantage over Caruana, who needed six hours to overcome Adams, but Caruana played very well. It was then on to a pair of five-minute games (with three seconds' Bronstein delay), and here, surprisingly, Nepomniachtchi faltered. In the first game, with White, he blundered a piece in the opening in a position that was already poor. Resignation wasn't out of the question, but with lots of money at stake and its being a blitz game, Nepo kept going, and somehow managed to hold. It was a virtuoso performance of sorts. In the next game, however, Caruana outplayed his opponent and won a long game. It wasn't perfect, but Caruana was clearly the deserved winner.

Thus Caruana achieved his first-ever victory in a Grand Chess Tour event, while Carlsen gained his second all-around tour victory, the first coming in 2015. (He didn't play in all the events in 2016 due to his world championship match with Karjakin.)

The games are here (with my comments to the three wins in the round proper and brief comments to the last two playoff games), and these are the final standings:

• 1-2. Caruana, Nepomniachtchi 6 (of 9; Caruana first after the playoff)
• 3-5. Vachier-Lagrave, So, Carlsen 5
• 6. Nakamura 4.5 (nine draws!)
• 7. Aronian 4
• 8. Karjakin 3.5
• 9-10. Anand, Adams 3

2017 London Chess Classic, Round 8: Nepo Beats Carlsen, Takes the Clear Lead with a Round to Go

Magnus Carlsen had enjoyed excellent fortune in the last two rounds, getting a lot of luck (while also defending resiliently) to turn two lost positions into a draw and a win. But this time his luck run out, and even went in reverse. This time he had a large, possibly winning advantage against Ian Nepomniachtchi, and this happened at (at least) two points in the game. One thing Nepo did well was to move fast, and Carlsen got into mild time trouble. That doesn't fully explain the series of errors he committed, however, culminating in a blunder on move 36 that left him a piece down for nothing. There was no Santa Claus in store for him this time, and he resigned after move 40.

The other four games were drawn, so Nepomniachtchi now leads the tournament, half a point ahead of Fabiano Caruana. In the overall Grand Chess Tour standings, it seems that Carlsen's slim lead over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave would hold up if all tomorrow's games were drawn, but any further positive progress by MVL or further regress by Carlsen would give the Frenchman tour victory.

Here are today's games (I've annotated Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi), and here are the pairings for the final round today/tomorrow (Monday):

• Nepomniachtchi (5.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (4.5)
• Anand (3) - So (4)
• Karjakin (3) - Nakamura (4)
• Caruana (5) - Adams (3)
• Aronian (4) - Carlsen (4)

2017 London Chess Classic, Round 7: Lots of Blood

In round 7 three of the five games saw a winner, doubling the total of wins through the entire tournament.

One of the players whose game finished in a draw was Fabiano Caruana's. He started the round in clear first with a +2 score and the white pieces against Wesley So. So was better prepared in a 5.d3 Bc5 Ruy and equalized easily, drawing in just 30 moves. (If anything, So was a little better near the end.)

Caruana maintained the lead, but thanks to Ian Nepomniachtchi's win over Viswanathan Anand it's a shared lead. Nepo played an experimental opening hoping for a chance to fight, and he got it. His play wasn't perfect, but he handled the unusual situation much better than Anand did, and won an impressive game.

While Caruana and Nepomniachtchi are the front-runners in this tournament, Magnus Carlsen and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave are the leaders in the overall Grand Chess Tour standings. Both drew their first six games, and both won in round 7. For Carlsen this required some luck early on, as Michael Adams was winning in the opening (with Black against the Bird) and was better in the ending as well. But while Carlsen's initial salvation in the game was a matter of luck, he simply outplayed Adams in the ending. First he stabilized the situation, then he equalized, and then he managed to obtain some counterplay that wound up winning the game.

As for MVL, he won a nice game with Black in the Najdorf against Sergey Karjakin. He had suffered some defeats in the Delayed Poisoned Pawn in the last year or two, but this time he was well-prepared, neutralized White's attacking ideas, and eventually exploited the weaknesses left behind in the wake of White's aggression. He, like Carlsen, is half a point behind the leaders.

Finally, good preparation helped Levon Aronian gain the upper hand against Hikaru Nakamura, but he was unable to convert it into a win. (Or even to cause Nakamura as many problems as Aronian felt his early advantage merited.)

The games, with my comments, are here; the pairings for the penultimate round follow:

• Carlsen (4) - Nepomniachtchi (4.5)
• Adams (2.5) - Aronian (3.5)
• Nakamura (3.5) - Caruana (4.5)
• So (3.5) - Karjakin (2.5)
• Vachier-Lagrave (4.5) - Anand (2.5)