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GM Levon Aronian and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won their first quarterfinal matches at the Airthings Masters against GM Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So, respectively. The other two games ended 2-2: GM Daniil Dubov against GM Magnus Carlsen and GM Ian Nepomniachtchi against Teimour Radjabov.
Aronian vs. Nakamura: 2.5-1.5
“I thought my game was better today because the last two days were horrible so I got mad at myself,” Aronian said after defeating Nakamura on the first day of the quarterfinals. “I decided I needed to play solid chess and things worked out well today.”
The Armenian GM was very solid, for example, in his two black games, using Ragozin’s defense with great success. It was the second game, with a London system, that gave Aronian the victory:
Aronian’s game plan for Game 2? “Try to relax. Today I feel like I wasn’t tense, so I think it’s good. This is how I’m supposed to play.”
Vachier-Lagrave vs. So: 3-1
It was a bad day for American chess because So also lost. Unusually, he fell on both of his white sets. This was related to the fact that the American GM was willing to test MVL’s Najdorf repertoire on a relatively sharp line (6.Be3 Ng4 7.Bg5). It was a commendable approach that, however, backfired.
Carlsen-Dubov: 2-2
Carlsen started off with a good win in this match, and in fact Dubov thought it was perhaps the best game of the four. The world champion kept posing problems for him in the end and eventually Dubov slipped:
In the second game, Carlsen misjudged something while avoiding repeating a move, and as a result, he was on the defensive end for 34 moves before reaching a tie. In the next game, he fell after all.
“In the third game, I fell asleep at some point,” he said. “I understood that I might have some tricks, but I didn’t consider them dangerous and then for some reason I stopped calculating. I just made a mistake.”
Dubov: “I know I can beat Magnus sometimes, but this game is very strange by his standards. It’s not the way you normally beat him, I think he just played poorly, to be honest.”
“After all, it is very disappointing to be one game up and lose to White unnecessarily,” Carlsen said. “That’s how it is sometimes. Still, it was an even game.”
Dubov had been pushing a bit in Game 4 as well, so he had mixed feelings about it 2-2. The Russian player emphasized how happy he is to be able to play against the world champion: “The result is obviously good. I really enjoyed it; he is my favorite opponent.”
He went so far as to call it “a Christmas present” to be paired with Carlsen, adding: “My only wish for tomorrow is that it lasts as long as possible.”
Nepomniachtchi vs. Radjabov: 2-2
This match was quite close but in the end, all the matches ended in draws. The first was possibly the most interesting. As King’s former Indian player, Radjabov should have put his mindset more in the attacking game, as he had two chances to abandon a trade in exchange for a very strong attack:
All the games
The Champions Chess Tour Airthings Masters runs from December 26 to January 3. The preliminary phase is a fast round robin of 12 players (15 | 10). The top eight players advance to a six-day knockout consisting of two days of four-game snap games, advancing to the blitz (5 | 3) and armageddon tiebreaks (White has five minutes, Black four without increment) only if the knockout match is tied after the second day. The prize pool is $ 200,000 with $ 60,000 for first place.
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