The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi scored quick knockouts on the first day of their quarterfinal matches against Fabiano Caruana and Vladislav Artemiev. Carlsen dominated his match against Caruana. Carlsen felt Caruana went wrong pretty early in the first game allowing a standard minority attack with very long term pressure and Carlsen brought home the point impressively. Carlsen admitted that he was pretty lucky early on in his second game when his 12...Nxb5 (fortunately the second best move in the position) was played as a result of a mouse slip. Carlsen grabbed a pawn in a Rook vs Bishops of opposite colours endgame and while the computer felt Caruana should hold in practice it got very difficult quite quickly. The final game saw a bit of an opening fiasco for Caruana and Carlsen remained in control throughout eventually settling for a very safe draw. Carlsen pointed out that he was equally impressive in his first set against Nakamura in Lindores Abbey and he went on to lose that tie but this was certainly a convincing victory.

Ian Nepomniachtchi's victory against Vladislav Artemiev was a lot less convincing. In the first game to be sure Nepomniachtchi played very impressively and just short of crowning a fine attacking game he blundered the entire advantage away (41.Qg7+ wins, his 41.Rd3 Ra1! is equal). However in a completely drawn position Artemiev was disconnected from the server and lost on time trying to reconnect. While the rules a pretty clear beyond buying the best you can I'm not really sure what a player can do about his connection. In game two Artemiev got a big advantage out of the opening but Nepomniachtchi continued to resist strongly and he escaped in a rook and pawn endgame which was probably winning for Artemiev at some point. In the third game Artemiev won the opening battle but this advantage dribbled away and then he allowed a rather unfortunate skewer of his rooks after which he could not recover.

The players will play their second set of games on Saturday. On Friday Ding plays Nakamura and Giri plays Grischuk.