The Week in Chess

The first set of the semifinals of the FTX Crypto Chess tournament saw Wesley So take the lead against Ian Nepomniachtchi by winning the final game of a day after he seemed on the back foot for most of it. Magnus Carlsen took the lead against Teimour Radjabov by winning a fine game three only for Radjabov to strike back straight away in game four so that set ended up tied.

Magnus Carlsen and Teimour Radjabov managed just one decisive game in two sets in the New in Chess Classic and today they started with two draws - Radjabov equalised pretty easily with black in game one and put a small amount of pressure out of the opening in game two before 23.Qc4 (maybe Re4 was better) h5! equalised for Carlsen. Game three was a Fianchetto King's Indian where Carlsen won fairly smoothly after 28...Nc8? which has to be an error. In game four Radjabov struck straight back with his new 10.h4 in an extremely well known Ragozin position led quickly to a crushing position, 12...e5 looks a bad move although it should be noted that computers dislike 17.Rf4 (Rd4) saying 17...Qb6 equalised, this was certainly Carlsen's last chance as he had to bail out into a totally lost endgame which he duly lost.

Nepomniachtchi was a frustrated man - he said that he played much better than Wesley So today and that if he plays like this tomorrow he has a good chance of levelling the match. Also before the match he had a dig at his opponent's liking for draws and that seemed to affect So's play especially in game three where So turned down a draw by repetition only to get into a difficult position and then blunder an entire piece, one that Nepomniachtchi however did not take. This was quite an amazing oversight. Then - and this was clearly audible on Nepomniachtchi's feed - in the final game Nepomniachtchi's playing area was invaded by very noisy mosquitos and this distracted him enough to lose a drawn endgame and thus lose the set.

The semifinals will conclude tomorrow and start at 4pm UK time.