The Week in Chess

The World Chess Championship Candidates resumed in Yekaterinburg 390 days (1 year and 25 days) after being halted following round 7 on 25th March 2020. At that point Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave were a point clear of much of the rest of the field - Nepomniachtchi was sick and had just lost a game - he candidly admitted today he was very much aided by a break. The second half of the event started with round 8 today and after looking for a long time that there would be four draws in fact two games were decisive - the most important of which was Fabiano Caruana's victory over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave which puts him right in contention half a point behind Nepomniachtchi and ahead of MVL on tie-break (their head to head score). Kirill Alekseenko won his first game of the event beating Alexander Grischuk after the latter probably tried a bit too hard to create winning chances for himself.

There is no more alarming thing in modern chess then your opponent rattling out moves in an ultra sharp position, this is what happened to joint leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. MVL's Najdorf was at least fairly predictable and Caruana played at least 26 moves of preparation. Caruana gave up three pawns and then on top of that a piece. MVL did extremely well to avoid losing on the spot but did finish up in a very unpleasant endgame the exchange down which was still probably draw able. Later MVL seemed very much to be on course for a draw with a simplification down to just one pawn each on the kingside and his knight well place around the key g7 and f5 squares - making progress was impossible for white with best play. After defending stoutly for such a long time MVL made the losing move 55...Nh6 after only a few seconds thought and following 56.Rg3+ Caruana was finally winning and he converted a few moves later.

Kirill Alekseenko was almost certainly surprised by Alexander Grischuk's choice of the French Defence. When the Queen's came off and Alekseenko played 18.Nd1 there seemed the possibility of him getting into trouble, but his 24.Bd6 followed by the provocative centralisation of his King seems to have been quite a profound concept and after giving up the exchange on move 36 his well coordinated position was at least equal. Grischuk had no real winning chances but in the lead up to move 60 - with both players in time trouble - Grischuk sharpened the struggle allowing white's e-pawn to the seventh rank. 57...Ra8 (57...Kf5 seems to hold) was the final mistake and at move 60 Alekseenko was winning and he accurately converted.

Ian Nepomniachtchi repeated against Anish Giri for a draw in 28 moves. Magnus Carlsen was somewhat surprised and thought he had the option to continue with very little risk with 28.b4. It doesn't seem there was very much in the final position and in the Candidates the draw percentage is pretty high most of the time, Nepomniachtchi could conceivably qualify by drawing all his games, bravery has not by any means always been rewarded in this format. Wang Hao played a sharp Scotch against Ding Liren but very quickly they reached a well known drawing line and the game indeed was drawn by repetition.

Round 8 Standings: 1st Nepomniachtchi 5pts 2nd Caruana 4.5pts 3rd MVL 4.5pts 4th Giri 4pts 5th Wang Hao 4pts 6th Alekseenko 3.5pts 7th Grischuk 3.5pts 8th Ding Liren 3pts

Round 9 Tuesday 20th April 2021 Alekseenko-Caruana, Grischuk-Nepomniachtchi, Giri-Wang Hao and Ding-MVL.