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Levon Aronian and Teimour Radjabov were not wrong as they clinched victory in their semifinal matches early to set up a $ 100,000 final on Saturday and Sunday. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Daniil Dubov had to win on demand in the first four quick games to force a tiebreaker, but neither came close. Dubov’s hyper-aggressive chess backfired as he lost both games played, while Levon rarely cared before clinching a 113-move victory in game three. Dubov and MVL will compete for $ 40,000 in the match for third place.
You can replay all the Airthings Masters knockout games using the selector below.
Here are the live commentary of the day from Tania Sachdev and Peter Leko.
And Kaja Snare, Jovanka Houska and David Howell.
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There were no comebacks on Day 2 of the Airthings Masters semifinals, and both matches ended early.
Let’s take a look at the matches:
Radjabov 2: 0 Dubov
If there was any doubt about how Daniil Dubov would approach his must-win match against Teimour Radjabov, it was dispelled with move 5 of the first game of the day, when the Russian went for 5.g4 !? A couple of moves later and the game was in uncharted waters.
Teimour welcomed that development.
I’m used to guys like Magnus who will just play some kind of quiet chess and put a lot of pressure to the end, for 100 moves and things like that, and he just started with this g4 …
I was trying to cool him down as much as I could, I was playing all the boring positions, for him to sacrifice something maybe in the end or something … This was the kind of strategy I had for the match, play as boring as possible but you can thank Dubov for creating so many cool games and making me show my best there.
The first game was exciting, but it was always Black who seemed most likely to win until Dubov’s position collapsed when he played. 26.Qg4.
26… Rxe3 +! It was the kind of blow that Radjabov does not miss, with the point that 27.fxe3 Qf1 + 28.Kd2 Qd3 + 29.Ke1 Rf1 # is simply checkmate. Then
27.Kf1 Qxg4 28.Rxg4 Teimour was two pawns up in an endgame and also had the best pieces, with the outcome of the game without a doubt.
It is to Dubov’s credit, however, that he still managed to make a fight and came very close to drawing. With move 50 only the beautiful 50… Ne5! it was a clear victory: the knight cannot be taken as the queen of the h-pawn, while after some other move g5 + will force the queen of the pawn anyway.
Teimour missed that and played 50… g5 + ?! immediately, throwing Daniil a lifeline, but in the end Teimour’s pressure throughout the game paid off and after a final slip from Dubov he won the first game.
That meant Dubov would now have to win at least one game with the black pieces, and unsurprisingly, he set out to try right away. Peter Svidler, who joined the other Peter and Tania in commenting, felt Daniil’s approach was suboptimal against Teimour.
Peter said of Radjabov:
He is a very, very strong player, particularly when you put him in situations where he is forced to show that, as I think we are seeing for two days in a row, Daniil constantly challenges him to play in positions that are probably fine. for him, but they are positions that he has not seen before, and he has to solve them overboard. He is an exceptionally strong chess player and has been handling it very, very well. But I think maybe Daniil could have slowed down a bit and played a bit more reserved style, to give himself time to readjust to the fact that he is now in the semi-finals and there are still four days of chess to go.
Again, it was complex, but again, nothing really worked for Daniil, and Teimour was finding powerful solutions to his problems:
41.Rxc4! picked up a potentially troublesome pawn, as 41… Qxc4 meets 42.Nf6 + and 43.Qxc4, winning the black queen. It also showed that Teimour had correctly assessed that the infiltration of the black forces into his camp was nothing to fear. White’s king was able to confidently march to h4 and soon it was just a question of how White would achieve victory.
48.Rc8! was the final move, with the computer announcing mate-in-8!
Even if Dubov now won the next two games, he could only tie on Day 2, so it was all over and the 2019 World Cup winner Teimour Radjabov had reached the final of the Airthings Masters. But who would join him?
Aronian 2: 1 MVL
Levon Aronian took the lead convincingly on the first day of this clash, and he looked just as impressive on Day 2. His future opponent Radjabov was full of praise:
Levon is showing very high class these days, he is playing great chess, just like in the old days when he played this kind of slow and easy chess and didn’t make a lot of mistakes, very simple chess and so on.
We didn’t get the same kind of explosive action as in the other match, and in the first game Maxime successfully defended a somewhat awkward position in the Grünfeld Defense.
In Game 2, it was Levon who had to defend, this time in Berlin, and he also did so impressively in 65 moves, despite falling less than 30 seconds on his clock from move 33 onwards. A break of the electronic pawn secured the tie.
54… e4! 55.f4 e3! 56.Bxe3 Ra5! 56.Bc1 Rc5! and it turned out that the pressure on the white pawns was enough for Black to hold on.
Maxime needed to win one of the next two games to level the scores in the clash and force a tiebreaker, but a replay of his Grünfeld Defense only left him in a nasty finish that would deteriorate at breakneck speed.
The work of a Grünfeld player is never done, as Peter explained!
Around move 20, Black was lost, but, as Hikaru Nakamura pointed out during the Speed Chess Championship, it seems that Maxime’s tenacity on defense has reached a new level. He made sure there were no easy wins for Levon and time after time he came close to securing a draw, only to make one last stumble with 79… Ba7 (79… Bc7! It seems to hold on).
80.Nd6! e5 81.d5! e4 82.Nxe4!
he eventually saw Maxime forced to give up his two bishops for pawns, leaving Levon to prove that he can mate with a knight + bishop against a naked king. There have been famous instances of elite players failing to do that, but Aronian was right and Maxime threw in the towel on move 113.
So it is two fit players, Levon Aronian and Teimour Radjabov, who have reached the final of the Airthings Masters.
Levon commented of Radjabov:
Of course he is a tough competitor and he is very good in this format so I am looking forward to the match. I have faced him many times before, I think the score is in my favor, but it is a final, so everyone is ready.
Levon is 5 wins to 3 in classical chess, but in rapids and blitz it seems that Teimour may have the upper hand, winning the last decisive game between the two players, a landslide victory in the Skilling Open preliminaries. Team Levon is ready, however!
At stake is the top prize of $ 60,000 ($ 40,000 for second place), 80 Tour Points (50 for second place) and an automatic place in the Grand Final in September 2021. There is also a third place in this event. , between Daniil Dubov and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, where the difference between the 3rd and 4th is $ 10,000 and 10 Tour Points.
So we can look forward to some tense battles, and staying calm is something that is much easier said than done!
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