The Week in Chess

Ian Nepomniachtchi had already secured first place in the FIDE Candidates tournament in Madrid with a round to spare. Nepomniachtchi avoided defeat in the final round when he drew with black against Jan-Krzysztof Duda in a Petroff variation he hadn't expected. Nepomniachtchi had to work hard to remember his preparation which certainly ran up to 15...a5!? after that Nepomniachtchi may have been a bit better but the players started to steer towards a draw a few moves later and they only had one bishop between them on move 48. Thus Nepomniachtchi finished the event undefeated and with a modern record score of 9.5/14. Afterwards Nepomniachtchi revealed his stellar if not especially surprising team (he'd worked with most if not all before if I understand correctly) of Nikita Vitiugov, Peter Leko, Ildar Khairullin, Vladimir Potkin and Evgeny Tomashevsky.

The main game of interest in the final round was the game Ding Liren against Hikaru Nakamura, one of these players would have to finish in second place and be first reserve if Magnus Carlsen or Ian Nepomniachtchi don't play the World Championship match. Nakamura only needed to secure a draw but in interview afterwards he admitted the entire occasion got the better of him. Nakamura became unreasonably upset with himself with 18...h6 instead of 18...Rxd1 starting to trade rooks. Both moves are about equivalent objectively but Nakamura came to believe he wouldn't have had any problems at all without rooks. As it was he slid into trouble and 35...Bd8? was a bad error, Ding gave him one more chance to save the game 38.e4? (38.exf4) 38...f3! would have put the whole result in the balance again, instead after 38...Bf6? Ding converted his big advantage confidently.

The reasons for Fabiano Caruana's complete meltdown in this event will have to wait for another day. After starting with 5/7 Caruana went to score just three draws in the second half of the tournament including a final disappointing defeat to Alireza Firouzja where he went from pushing to fighting for a draw in only a few moves and then missed several clear chances to draw in an admittedly very tricky endgame. I don't doubt Caruana's continued world class at chess but he hasn't looked comfortable over the board for the last two years, everything is harder than it should be for him. Time for a rethink and rejig of his game. Richard Rapport went all in against Teimour Radjabov and after a hard battle suddenly Radjabov had survived and went on to win.

So now it's all up to Magnus Carlsen and FIDE. They had some talks about whether Carlsen would defend his title and FIDE said they would make proposals as to the regulations very soon and like to hear back from Carlsen by July 20th. Perhaps it's time for a change and for younger players to have an input into how the title is decided. The current World Championship stability was hard won though, the anarchy of the 1990s and early 2000s where players of real ambition couldn't plan their careers and even qualifying for a World Championship match didn't necessarily mean you'd get to play it are long behind us. Carlsen I'm told never liked the current system and was almost always a reluctant participant. This is the background to what may be a very interesting month of news.

I'm sorry for the delay for this final article, like the players I got very tired towards the end of this event, wonderful though it was, even to the very last round.

Final Standings: 1st Nepomniachtchi 9.5pts (TB1 62), 2nd Ding Liren 8pts (TB1 52), 3rd Radjabov 7.5pts (TB1 52), 4th Nakamura 7.5pts (TB1 50.25), 5th Caruana 6.5pts (TB1 46.5), 6th Firouzja 6pts (TB1 39.5), 7th Duda 5.5pts (TB1 38.5), 8th Rapport 5.5pts (TB1 37.75).