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Garry Kasparov found a brilliant counterplay to beat Alireza Firouzja, 40 years his junior, and get his Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX campaign off to the best possible start. Garry was then in trouble against Magnus Carlsen in Round 2, but found a way to save his first competitive game in 16 years. That was the only half point Magnus dropped, with the World Champion’s two victories including a spectacular crush of No. 2 Fabiano Caruana. Leinier Domínguez is a surprise co-leader with 2.5 / 3 after beating Hikaru Nakamura and Firouzja.
The Day 1 pairings of the Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX gave us a delicious clash in each of the first three rounds. You can replay all the action using the selector below (click on a result to open the game with computer analysis).
And here is the live commentary of the day from Jennifer Shahade, Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley.
Let’s take a look at the action round by round.
Round 1: Firouzja 0-1 Kasparov
The most anticipated match on Day 1 of Chess 9LX was, of course, Kasparov-Carlsen, their first competitive encounter since a quick tournament in Reykjavik in 2004, when Magnus was only 13. A close second, however, was Firouzja-Kasparov, since 17 one-year-old Alireza Firouzja is currently the only player who seems to have the potential and mindset to dominate in the style of Magnus and Garry, though there are a host of teenagers who can still take on the role if Alireza slows down .
Kasparov, 57, might have been surprised if he checked Zoom’s call to find Firouzja dressed in all the cheekiness of youth!
However, as the game developed, it was noted that while Alireza was in good position, he was playing slowly. Garry would later comment:
The first game was difficult. I think he was probably in trouble, but I created a lot of counterplay and was pretty glad I was ahead of time, and I cheated him in the end. Considering the age difference of 40 years, I did it right!
32.c4? (32.Rc3! Trying Rd4 is the computer’s fearless approach, when claiming a winning advantage), played with less than 20 seconds left on the clock, was the first step on the road to ruin for Alireza, who entered into 32… d4! 33.Nxf5 Kxf5 34.Re1 h4!
Garry invites his opponent to win the exchange, as Alireza did with 35.Be4 + (there was no good alternative) 35… Ke6 36.f5 + Kxe5 37.Bd5 + Kf6 38.Bxf7 Kxf7
And suddenly it turns out that the g-pawn cannot be prevented from reigning. 39.gxh4 simply meets 39 … g3 40.Re2 Nf4, while in the game 39.Ke2 hxg3 40.Kg2 was greeted by the gentle 40… Kf6! and the king and the knight escorted the g-pawn on his victory march. Garry, who went six games without a win at the start of his Chess 9LX match with Fabiano Caruana a year ago, was delighted to start off with a win.
It was a dramatic start elsewhere as well, as all but one game ended decisively. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave appeared to be close to catching Magnus Carlsen’s king with his rooks, but it only ended in a lost rooks finale. Peter Svidler spoiled a decent position against Wesley So by getting into trouble, while Leinier Dominguez survived a rocky start against Hikaru Nakamura (he had missed the mighty 5… e5!) for a remarkably smooth victory.
Perhaps the most surprising game, however, was the only draw, Aronian-Caruana. Fabi was totally winning.
If I had known what was going to follow I could have played 31 … Rxa2 here, but who could have imagined that later? 31… h6 The heavily outnumbered and attacked pawn would manage to give the queen 22 moves later!
The tattered black army was still enough to hold a draw.
Round 2: Kasparov ½-½ Carlsen
Garry Kasparov’s retirement in 2005, while Magnus was just 14 years old, deprived the chess world of what surely would have been some gripping battles between two of the all-time greats, so it was exciting to finally get this showdown after The players had come so close to meeting at other Saint Louis events in recent years.
Needless to say, it meant a lot to both players, but it was Magnus who got off to a better start. Garry regretted:
The second game, of course, was much more difficult and less enjoyable. I made a terrible move I think 5.Nc3. Again, this is what you do automatically, but instead, 5.Qc2! In fact, he could stop Black’s whole idea with c5.
“The hardest part [of Chess960] it’s how to position your queen, ”Garry said, and it seems his assessment was correct. After 5… dxc4 6.Bxc4 c5! Garry thought for over 5 minutes and again he seems to have been right that there was nothing better than going up against c5 and trading queens, despite how much it surprised the commentary team.
It looked like the first clash of the legends in 16 years could end in a draw, but luckily things soon perked up.
Garry called his 15.g4 !? “Too optimistic” and suggested that 15.Bc2 would have “forced a draw.” He was dreaming of g5, but after one move he “completely failed”, 15… Ba5!, said he wanted to go back with g4-g2!
That was not an option in this particular variant of chess, and it soon seemed that Magnus was going to sail to victory, until he sank into a thought 5 minutes later. 31.Rf3:
Magnus later lamented:
That was a very, very, very bad game. He started to defend himself very tenaciously at some point, but I was overthinking when I went for this. 31… Rf7? idea, just trying to be hyper-precise when there really was no reason for that. That was very, very poor.
Magnus had been looking at 31 … Bx2 32.Kxe2 and then 32 … exf4 or 32 … Rxf4, which he thought should be winning rook endings if he showed good technique. Then he got the idea to play 31… Rf7? first, but when checking the rook movements he had lost 32.Re3!, after which Garry suddenly returned to the game. Magnus did not hide his emotions:
Garry, meanwhile, thought that Magnus should have gone for 31… Rd8 + 32.Ke1 Rd3 and, “I would quit”. That puzzled Magnus, as, as he guessed, the pawn ended after 33.Rxd3 Bxd3 34.fxe5 Bx2 35.Kxe2 is just a draw, while after 34 … Kxe5 there would have been a lot of life left in the position.
“It’s quite possible that technically it’s a win, but resignation is a long way off!” drew up, after showing a few more lines.
The rook ending that occurred in the game was much more difficult, with Garry describing the position after 42.Rh6 as one in which “it is not easy to find a victory”.
It looks like 42… Kd7! still wins but it was a draw after Magnus
42… Kf7, when the game continued 43.h5! gxh5 44.Rxh5 b6 45.Re5!
Black’s king is cut, Re4 is threatened and 45… Rxa4 is simply met by 45.Rb5. There was no way to avoid a tie.
Garry later noted that he had been inspired by the famous 1962 draw Mikhail Botvinnik found against Bobby Fischer, a game that Emil Sutovsky and Anish Giri also remembered while watching the action. The game, which features the longest scores in Bobby’s “My 60 Memorable Games,” was also tackled by a young Garry Kasparov, who was born a year later.
On the other hand, there was only one decisive game in Round 2, a Fabiano Caruana victory after Maxime Vachier-Lagrave collapsed in a difficult but roughly equal position.
Round 3: Carlsen 1-0 Caruana
When arguably the least interesting box office clash of the day is Carlsen-Caruana, a clash of the world’s two best players and a replay of the 2018 World Championship match, you know it’s been a good day! However, the game lived up to its billing, with Fabiano making the race early on.
Magnus agreed, and then commented:
I thought they were beating me sometime in the middle game, so I decided to make the position a bit simpler, and this exchange was in the same style. After this, I thought that I had very, very few practical difficulties and that it should be easier for me to play. I didn’t expect it to be as easy as it did in the game, but nevertheless, I think White has an easier position to play and very, very little risk.
27.g4! Nh3 28.f3! Nxg1 was the spark of Magnus’ genius, and then 29.Rxg1 g5 30.h4 gxh4? 31.Qf2 Qg7 he even had a choice.
Opted for 32.Qxa7 instead of taking the h4 pawn, explaining, “why not!”
This way, I’m winning on the queenside, so you have to create a royal counterplay so as not to lose prosaically, and I also thought the h-pawn was a pretty decent shield for my king.
So it turned out, with Magnus crashing in the end.
2.5 / 3 and the joint leadership was not a bad end to the day, and although Magnus himself said: “I don’t feel like he played well”, he understood that he could feel that a Norwegian news site leading with “Carlsen with mega-error It was a bit of a harsh summary of his daily work!
The only level player with Magnus is Leinier Domínguez, who was back in top form and technically surpassed Alireza Firouzja. Leinier commented: “It feels good. I’m happy because I felt like I was playing well most of the day. ”
Hikaru Nakamura scored a first win of the day against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, though he commented: “It felt like Maxime was going crazy!” The game almost ended as a competition from the beginning.
After that, Hikaru was mainly concerned about someone cutting through the hedge in the background.
It had been another miserable day of online chess for Maxime, and this time there was no blame reserving vacancies for the Candidates!
Wesley So kept his usual style of getting a win or two and then playing as solidly as possible, although he could have kept playing instead of taking a 14-move draw against Levon Aronian, who tied all three games.
Last but not least, Peter Svidler scored a victory against none other than Garry Kasparov.
22… e3 ?! It was a bold move from Garry, who was already losing a pawn, but the 13th World Champion was never close to justifying the sacrifice as Peter consolidated and won in 45 moves. It was Peter’s most notable win against Garry since winning their first match at Tilburg in 1997, but he didn’t seem overly excited.
He had an entertaining explanation afterwards!
We played some training matches before the event, because we wanted to warm up a bit. They handed me my, whatever it was, like you didn’t believe the scores from that week of training. It was nowhere! It feels a bit embarrassing. I feel like I hit Garry a little bit, considering how bad he was playing! I feel a little bad about it, but only up to a point.
That left Kasparov and Svidler among the 5-man group at 50%, while Carlsen and Dominguez lead at 2.5 / 3 and MVL bottoms at 0/3.
Games to look forward to Saturday include Kasparov-Caruana, Nakamura-Carlsen, Kasparov-Nakamura and Firouzja-Carlsen. In short, you won’t want to miss the action live from 8:00 PM CEST here on chess24!
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