The Week in Chess

The Airthings Masters moved to a knockout phase following the conclusion of the preliminaries on Monday. The 8 players left compete in a knockout mini-match format of best of four rapid game sets. If the players are tied at 1-1 there will be a blitz tie-break to produce a winner.

On the first day of the semi-finals Maxime Vachier-Lagrave beat Wesley So 3-1 winning both his game with black. With black So chose to defend the Berlin twice and the games were quite balanced, both games where So was white were ultra-sharp, in game two So had two bishops, MVL had rook and four pawns and was the one with the winning chances. The position was terribly difficult for both sides but with 44.Rb1? So allowed MVL to play a liquidating tactic that finished with this Rook dropping off. Game four So played sharply but was always worse and eventually he lost too much material. Levon Aronian said he was angry with himself over his play the last two days so he decided to play more solidly. Aronian played the London System in game two and Nakamura drifted into a strategically horrid position and Aronian finished things with some very attractive tactics. Nakamura never looked like getting back into the match.

Magnus Carlsen has had his troubles with Daniil Dubov in some of the online events this year. Today Carlsen got off to an ideal start finding a way to win a very drawn Rook and Pawn endgame. Dubov struck back in game three, Dubov was the one pressing throughout but Carlsen's greedy 31.Qxa5? allowed a decisive attack against his King, the final game was drawn. All four games were drawn between Nepomniachtchi and Radjabov. In game one Nepomniachtchi pressed for a very long time in a slightly favourable position. In game four Rajdabov had very real winning chances but he had much less time and he allowed a liquidation into an endgame that Nepomniachtchi could hold.

The second sets of these quarter-final mini-matches take place on Wednesday 30th December at 2pm GMT.