The Week in Chess

The final day of the Airthings Masters Preliminary section did produce more than it's fair share of excitement as even the last placed players were within half a point of qualification and four players tied 7th-10th for the final two qualification places. This rather made up for the quiet first couple of days and produced some very interesting quarter final pairings for tomorrow. The main loser on the day was Alexander Grischuk whose final round loss to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave meant that the Frenchman qualified rather than him.

Round 9 saw Giri beat MVL a result that looked like it put him in contention and MVL virtually out of the running but things didn't work out that way, Nakamura beat David Anton with a surprise out of the opening (Nakamura and So are playing at 6am in the morning but Nakamura says he is a morning person anyhow) and Nepomniachtchi beat Dubov, Carlsen missed a win against Grischuk (63...Kg5? was a mistake - 63...Rf5 was the only winning move) but still tortured the Russian for a very long time and perhaps this had an effect later in the day. In Round 10 Nakamura looked like he was headed for a comfortable draw against Carlsen but first a slight miscalculation upset him and then he blundered the entire position away. The rest of the games were drawn but MVL was completely lost against Teimour Radjabov and his draw proved incredibly important.

Round 11 saw practically every player but David Anton with a chance to qualify and only Carlen home and dry. Anton defeated Levon Aronian, Wesley So played the game of the day as he won with some extremely pleasing tactics at the end of his game against Daniil Dubov who then was forced to wait to see if he would qualify. Nepomniachtchi and Carlsen drew quickly, Radjabov and Harikrishna also drew. Anish Giri assumed he needed to win and played the King's Indian Attack against Hikaru Nakamura, Giri briefly had chances but once he grabbed a hot c-pawn he was in dire straits and Nakamura brought home the full point. The final game to finish looked like it was heading for a draw but Grischuk was short of time and MLV found a way to win the endgame and qualify himself and eliminate Grischuk.

In the end Carlsen finished first, ahead of Wesley So and Nakamura all on 6.5 points/11, next came Nepomniachtchi and Radjabov on 6 points, then Aronian on 5.5 points, in the tie for 7th place and the final two qualification places were MVL who had the best score between those on 5 points, Daniil Dubov finished tied on that score with Harikrishna but had two wins compared to the Indian's none, Grischuk had the lowest number of points between the tied players. Giri and Anton were only half a point further back, just emphasizing how close it all was.

Quarter final pairings Tuesday 29th - Wednesday 30th 2020: Carlsen-Dubov, Radjabov-Nepomniachtchi, Nakamura-Aronian, Wesley So-MVL.