The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen beat Boris Gelfand 3-0 to lead the Chess24 Legends of Chess tournament alone on a perfect scored of 12 points after four rounds. The first game was a sharp Sveshnikov Sicilian where Carlsen steadily outplayed Gelfand. In the second game Gelfand simply blundered an important pawn and resigned immediately and in the third game Carlsen won in another Sicilian with white fairly comfortably as well.

Ian Nepomniachtchi was given a hard fight by Vasyl Ivanchuk but after three draws he won the opening battle in a 4.Bf4 Gruenfeld and Ivanchuk was in desperate trouble after 14.Qd3? (14.Qa4) and eventually brought the full point home. Nepomniachtchi has dropped a point because he won his first match in an Armageddon but like Carlsen he has won all his matches.

Ding Liren came from behind to defeat Peter Svidler 2.5-1.5 and will surely be pretty relieved to get on the scorecard. Svidler won comfortably in the first game but Ding took his chance in game two after Svidler's 24...Ke7? (24...Bd4=) 25.f5!1 won material and the game. Game three was drawn and in the final game Svidler got in a very difficult situation with black and simply couldn't escape another loss. Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Leko drew the first three games - Kramnik made a hash of the third game in terrible time trouble and was briefly lost even though a piece up. In the final game Leko allowed a decisive piece sacrifice with 27.Nb6? (27.Kg1 was necessary1) and for the third time lost a match in the final game. Anish Giri beat Viswanathan Anand in a final decisive Armageddon game, Anand simply wasn't fast enough, even though he as winning on the board for some time it didn't matter, he was never going to have enough time to win and seemed oblivious to the problem. It's almost a shock to write this about Anand who has won rapid and blitz titles throughout his career - even quite recently - but age catches up with us all.

Round 4 results:
Ian Nepomniachtchi 2.5-1.5 Vasyl Ivanchuk
Peter Svidler 1.5-2.5 Ding Liren
Magnus Carlsen 3-0 Boris Gelfand
Vladimir Kramnik 2.5-1.5 Peter Leko
Anish Giri 3-2 Viswanathan Anand

Round 4 Standings: 1 Magnus Carlsen 12pts, 2 Ian Nepomniachtchi 11pts, 3 Peter Svidler 9pts, 4 Vladimir Kramnik 7pts, 5 Boris Gelfand 6pts, 6 Anish Giri 5pts, 7 Vasyl Ivanchuk 4pts, 8 Ding Liren 3pts, 9 Peter Leko 2pts, 10 Viswanathan Anand 1pt.

Round 5 pairings Saturday 25th July 2020: Nepomniachtchi-Svidler, Carlsen-Ivanchuk, Kramnik-Ding Liren, Giri-Gelfand and Anand-Leko