The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi progressed to the semifinals of the Chessable Masters in the fastest possible way winning the first two sets in just three games each. In advance both matches were expected to be much closer but Fabiano Caruana didn't seem in his best form at all - which is why he ended up playing Magnus in the first place. Vladislav Artemiev didn't have a lot of luck on day one, today he started strongly but a couple of frustrating games didn't got his way and then he was blown away in game three.

In the Carlsen-Caruana match game one saw Carlsen get a nice edge just out of the opening with black following 18.Rcd1 but just wasn't quite enough for a win. Carlsen thought that he was practically winning after just 19 moves of the second game and it was indeed quite a miserable experience for Caruana. Game 3 saw a very sharp Nimzo-Indian where Caruana won a pawn but his king was always a little less safe than Carlsen's. 29.h4 seemed to be the critical try which might have left Carlsen worse but instead the position equalised out and when Caruana went for complications with 34.Ke2 his position quickly fell apart following 35 Nf1? a5!.

Artemiev played the Trompowsky in game one and got some nice pressure but around move 30 the game became equal and stayed that way. In game two Nepomniachtchi blundered with 12.Ne6 missing 12...Nb4 that was played instantly. Nepomniachtchi found ways to complicate but nevertheless had Artemiev found 25...Rf8! he would surely have won quickly, instead his advantage fell away really quickly and he failed to take care of his back rank - 33...Nh5 is losing and after that there was no way out. Artemiev had a very nice position in game three too but 20.Ng3 (20.g4!) was met by the stunning 20...Bb1 ending the game almost immediately. That's going to turn up in a lot of puzzle books - take note.

Tomorrow Ding-Nakamura and Giri-Grischuk resume with Nakamura and Grischuk having to win to keep the matches going.