The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen reached the final of the Chessable Masters with a generally fine display against Ding Liren. After the game the only point Carlsen was unhappy with was his poor opening in game one but even there he found a way to sacrifice a pawn for reasonable play and Ding never really looked like making progress. Late on Carlsen was at least equal when he turned down a draw by repetition and he was rewarded almost straight away with a blunder that ended the game immediately in his favour. At the point of his losing move Ding only had one move to keep the game level (66.Nd1). Carlsen seemed happy enough with a draw with white in game two and so Ding really had to go for it in game three with white. Ding got a complex position which was something he needed but unfortunately for him he was completely outplayed and had to resign on move 29.

Ian Nepomniachtchi leveled up his match against Anish Giri but he gave his opponent quite enough chances to progress himself. In game one Giri got a quite big advantage by the early middlegame but couldn't convert. In game two Giri turned down a pretty well known line in the Reti where black is supposed to give up a pawn for adequate compensation, instead he played to keep the material and soon had a very bad position which he went on to lose. In game three Giri had a small edge which didn't amount to very much and the game was drawn, except 48....Ke5? 49.g5 is winning for Giri. In the final game Giri needed to win with black but was worse/lost pretty much the entire game and Nepomniachtchi settled for a draw in the end because it was as good as a win.

Nepomniachtchi and Giri come back for a final day on Thursday to decide who meets Carlsen in the final.