The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen won the 8th Altibox Chess tournament after beating Alireza Firouzja in the ninth round of the ten round event. Carlsen visited the confessional just out of the opening and was already unhappy with his choice as he believed that black had very few winning chances and white was a bit better. He was much happier a few moves later saying white might only be a "tiny" bit better which he visually demonstrated. The game then continued on and on and although Firouzja was not initially worse he started to consume a lot of time and play a little strangely. Carlsen started to take over and was pushing for a win but his 36...Nc1? which he thought was immediately finishing the game (instead he should have played 36...f5) turned out to allow Firouzja to get a more or less equal position. The game eventually simplified down to a drawn King and Pawn endgame where but Firouzja was surviving on the very short 10 second increment and was incredibly nervous, at the end Carlsen said Alireza was shaking so much it almost seemed random where the pieces landed, and in these circumstances Firouzja just blundered the entire position away and had to immediately resign. This meant that Carlen was already the winner of the tournament with one round to go.

Jan Krzysztof Duda and Fabiano Caruana both seemed intent of winning their game against each other in a Sicilian but in the end it finished in a repetition. Caruana eventually emerged with the slightly better position around move 37. Caruana won the Armageddon with black in impressive style.

Levon Aronian must have felt he had a must win game with black against Aryan Tari but he very much overdid it and was lost in only a few moves. Tari has had a miserable tournament and must have been rather nervous, eventually he started to go wrong and in the end Aronian escaped with a draw. Aronian won his first Armageddon.

Round 9 of 10 Standings: 1st Carlsen 19.5 2nd Firouzja 15.5 3rd Aronian 14.5 4th Caruana 14 5th Duda 9.5 6th Tari 2.5

Final Round 10 pairings Friday 16th 4pm BST: Carlsen-Aronian, Firouzja-Duda and Caruana-Tari.