The Week in Chess

The first day of the online Chessable Masters hosted by Chess24 got off to a lively start with Vladislav Artemiev leading his group above Daniil Dubov, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura. The Chessable Masters has moved to two preliminary groups of six players rather than one group of 12 used in the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge, days 1 and 3 will see Group A played, days 2 and 4 Group B. The top 4 of 6 in each group will qualify for the knockout mini-match stages.

Vladislav Artemiev has impressed in various online event but this is his first chance on Magnus' tour, he beat Pentala Harikrishna in round 1 and Daniil Dubov in Round 2 and drew his remaining games to finish on 3.5/5 at the half way stage. In second place is Lindores Abbey winner Daniil Dubov who recovered from his round 2 loss to Artemiev to beat Harikrishna in round 3 and he then downed Carlsen in round 4 to eventually finish the day on 3 points. Hikaru Nakamura drew all 5 of his games although he was winning against Harikrishna before blundering a pawn that should have queened. Carlsen had a poor day by his high standards and it could have been worse. Carlsen was better against Nakamura in round 1 but had to settle for a draw, in round 2 he beat eventually beat Harikrishna but he left a losing tactic 31.Rxa4 Nxa4 32.Qa7 hitting two pieces on and also it was there the following move. Carlsen played the careless 21.c4 against Alexander Grischuk in round 3, the pawn turned out to be very takable and Carlsen had to struggle mightily to earn a draw.. Carlsen then sacrificed an exchange against Dubov for probably winning compensation but then went completely off the rails and eventually lost, in the final round he had a fantastic position with black but was very unhappy with his decision to grab a pawn rather than improve his pieces and again had to settle for a draw. Alexander Grischuk finished the day losing to Harikrishna in a game that could have gone either way. Harikrishna found the first day very tough and could easily have finished on zero but he didn't get down and fought very hard for his draw and win in later rounds - and of course he could have beaten Carlsen.

Group A Standings: 1st Artemiev 3.5pts, 2nd Dubov 3pts, 3rd-4th Nakamura, Carlsen 2.5pts, 5th Grischuk 2pts, 6th Harikrishna 1.5pts.

Day 2 MVL, Ding, Nepomniachtchi, Caruana, Radjabov and Giri fight it out in group B at 3pm BST on Sunday.