The Week in Chess

The second day of quarter final matches in the Chessable Masters saw two incredibly close matches between well matched opponents. Anish Giri beat Alexander Grischuk by virtue of drawing the a final decisive Armageddon game after four rapid and two blitz games were drawn. Hikaru Nakamura lost game two within sight of a draw and the remaining three rapid games were drawn.

Anish Giri took advantage of his superior seeding to choose black and draw odds in a final Armageddon game against Alexander Grischuk and by fractions of a second it paid off. Giri managed to get the best of the opening as black in this final game and had soon equalised on the clock but the game continued and Grischuk built up a small advantage of time as both players headed under a minute, in the end though Grischuk managed to play several moves with no time and the game ended up with no pieces and the draw Giri needed. This is the nature of an Armageddon finish, the results can be extremely ugly and the ability to pre-move and outfox your opponent is a skill Giri says Nakamura is the true master of. The match was very tight with few chances, Giri looked had a winning endgame in game two but Grischuk defended brilliantly and eventually Giri lost his advantage. Giri thought his most dangerous moment was in the first blitz game when 17.Na4 would have been extremely awkward.

Ding Liren won an extremely long grind against Hikaru Nakamura in game two and that proved to be the entire difference between the players in another very tight match. Ding had a lovely structural advantage from around move 20 onwards but although he dictated play the bishops of opposite colour and solid nature of the position meant a breakthrough was extremely hard. After move 64 when Ding closed the Queen side it looked like he had more or less settled for a draw but he tried once against on the Kingside and 76.Ba1? (76.Rf2!) losing control of the open file and finally allowing penetration of the rooks settled the game. The other games in the match were drawn.

Tomorrow sees the second set of games in the matches Magnus Carlsen vs Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Vladislav Artemiev.