[ad_1]
The world champion wins the preliminaries again
In previous years, Magnus Carlsen used to start slow and only gained momentum later in a tournament, which most of the time he ended up winning. On the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, the Norwegian set a different trend in the first three events of the series, as he won the preliminary stages all three times, but has yet to win a tournament. At the Mangus Carlsen Invitational, he has also managed to win the preliminaries, with a score of 10½ / 15, ahead of former sole leader Anish Giri.
Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave reached the knockout phase by drawing all their games on Day 3; Wesley So and Levon Aronian won one game and tied the rest and also qualified; while Ian Nepomniachtchi had the strongest performance on Monday, scoring 4 points to climb to fifth place after a disappointing performance in the first ten rounds of the preliminaries.
Aronian qualified 8/15, the same score achieved by Sergey Karjakin: the first tiebreaker was the result in their direct encounter, and Aronian beat the Russian in round 3.
Given the format, some players chose to prioritize safety in the later rounds, securing their places in the top half of the standings. Nakamura, who was in fact the only player to finish the preliminaries undefeated, even agreed to a 6-move draw with Carlsen in the final round. Also, they did it by repeating the position of a “Bong Cloud” opening – 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 Ke7 3.Ke1 Ke8 4.Ke2 Ke7etc.
Click to enlarge
Round 11: Enter the fight
Three players who desperately needed to start racking up wins to enter the fight for the top eight started the day with a win: Nepomniachtchi, Karjakin and Teimour Radjabov.
Karjakin had four pawns per rook against Nils Grandelius, but the Swedish king was quite vulnerable on h2. A single mistake by Grandelius gave the Russian a huge advantage:
White needed to escape check with 31.Kh1, since his 31.Qg3 stop 31 … Qe2 + 32.Qg2 Bd6 + (the bishop joins the attack) 33.Rh1 Qd1 + 34.Qg1 Qd5 + and now White needs to give up his bishop with 35.Be4 since 35.Qg2 would be fulfilled with 35 … Re1 #
Karjakin grabbed the bishop and scored a 46-move victory.
Select an entry from the list to switch between games
Round 12: Giri’s only loss
Although at the time Giri and Carlsen were fighting side by side at the top of the standings, the Dutchman had shown a more solid performance throughout. However, Giri’s undefeated streak came to an end in round 12, when he was defeated by Nepomniachtchi.
It was Giri’s inaccuracy on move 28 that allowed Nepo to score his second win of the day:
Albin’s amazing countergambit
On this DVD, IM Trent shows Albin’s countergambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5). Trent found a number of extremely dangerous Theoretical Novelties that will really put Albin’s Countergambit back on the map.
By moving his bishop, White will threaten to checkmate at 1 on g7. Giri opted for 28.Bxe6 However, instead of the correct 28.Bf5 – after the latter, Black must give up his queen for a rook and a bishop with 28 … Qxg1 29.Qxg1 Bxf5. In the game, on the other hand, Nepo found 28 … g6 29.f5 Rf8 30.fxg6 fxe6 and the king has escaped:
The game went on 31.Rd1 a3 32.Qf3 + Bf5 33.b3 Qxe5 + and White resigned with mate-in-2 on the board.
Round 13: Ties
For the first time at the event, most games were tied in a single round, with seven of eight encounters giving the contenders half points. Only Grandelius scored a victory, as he beat Alan Pichot with the white pieces.
Pichot finished last at 2½ / 15 in the first elite tournament of his career. The 22-year-old shared on Facebook:
I tried an aggressive approach to find out how big the difference is between me and the best players in the world, and I never thought the difference would be THAT big.
The Argentine has an Elo rating of 2630 and won the U16 section of the World Youth Chess Championship in 2014.
Final analysis of GM Karsten Müller (Van Foreest v Giri)
Round 14: Aronian gets a much-needed win
A second forgettable day of action left Aronian in a difficult position heading into the final five rounds. The seasoned grandmaster, however, kept things under control, avoiding losses in rounds 11-13 and seizing his chance against an out-of-form David Anton.
The Armenian took a pair of pawns on the queenside early in the middlegame and slowly but surely increased his lead. Anton only quit on move 44:
Master class Vol.11: Vladimir Kramnik
This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) how to successfully organize your games strategically, consequently how to maintain and
White has one more piece and his b-pawn has reached the seventh rank. It is time to surrender.
Round 15: The fastest draw
Although Karjakin and Radjabov still had a chance to qualify, and were paired with each other, once Aronian got a draw against Grandelius, there was no way that either of them could make it to the knockout. Aronian had beaten Karjakin in their direct encounter and had more wins than Radjabov (the second tiebreaker).
The main story of the round, however, was the 6-move tie agreed by Carlsen and Nakamura. Both players visibly enjoyed the repetition of movements (1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 Ke7 3.Ke1 Ke8 4.Ke2 Ke7etc) and many chess fans celebrated ‘the bite’ on Twitter, but of course some were critical of the decision. Emil Sutovsky tweeted:
FIDE Manual:
12.1
Players will not take any action that discredits the game of chess.
– Emilchess (@EmilSutovsky) March 15, 2021
Thus ended a memorable preliminary stage. Now we move on to the quarterfinals, where Carlsen, So (who won two of the three previous events) and Giri are the favorites for the first prize of $ 60,000.
Final ranking
