The Week in Chess

The Chessable Masters semifinals started today with wins for Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri but the main story was yet again Ding Liren's problems with his Internet connection. Ding has had disconnections throughout the series with his, sometimes this has led to a loss on time, as it did today in game one, in a drawn position. The rules are clear that the players are responsible for their Internet connection and will lose on time if they can't reconnect before their clock runs out. While Carlsen isn't 100% in charge of these events he obviously has a big say in the rules. Today he made it clear this regulation isn't working for him and he fixed the problem by giving up game two almost immediately it started, thus levelling the scores at 1-1. This surely indicates Carlsen wants a change for the rest of the tour. For myself I think Ding clearly isn't doing this on purpose, he probably has the best Internet connection available to him but it could be that no connection will work from China. The organisers may have suggestions to provide greater stability for him (perhaps a mobile data backup?) and should at least look into what the issue is and possible solutions as we want to see Ding play his best.

The actual course of the Ding-Carlsen match was this: In game one Carlsen built up a very strong position in the endgame but Ding fought back to equalise and just at the point the position was completely equal Ding lost on time due to a dropped Internet connection. Carlsen gave up game two as explained above. Then Carlsen also came quite close to winning game three with first a powerful passed pawn which he used to win a bishop (perhaps he could have won more material) and then in the rook and bishop vs rook endgame but Ding defended resolutely in a very tricky position. The final rapid game was a King's Indian by Carlsen and was drawn in 35 moves. Carlsen was winning in the first blitz tie-break game with 66.Kf1 instead of his 66.Kg1, that game was then drawn. In the final blitz game Ding got an advantage but trading down he lost the edge bit by bit and his 50.c5? (50.Bd3) cost him the game and the first set.

Anish Giri beat Ian Nepomniachtchi and had chances to finish the match in just three games. The first game Nepomniachtchi got a fantastic opening but he let Giri back in the game and even briefly looked in trouble before a draw was agreed. Game two was settled when Nepomniachtchi blundered a one move tactic 21.Nxf7! and that was more or less that. Giri built up a winning advantage in game three with black but eventually had to settle for a draw when Nepomniachtchi found some counter chances. In the final game Nepomniachtchi looked to generate good winning chances but there was never anything really clear for him and Giri made no mistake after the losing 26.Nf4? Thus Giri won the first set 3-1.

The second set of games will take place at 3pm BST on Wednesday. Ding and Nepomniachtchi must win for these matches to continue.