The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen beat Peter Svidler and Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Anish Giri both by the score of 2.5-0.5 in the first set of the semifinal mini-matches of Chess24's Legends of Chess. The sets are best of 4 rapid games and the matches are won by winning two sets.

Peter Svidler tried to draw some lessons from his loss to Carlsen in the preliminaries, there he tried to play dry technical positions, now he's going for sharp chess, he said he feels this is the right strategy but that today he didn't execute it very well. The computers didn't like Svidler's sharp English Opening in game one but the key moment was Carlsen's 15...g5 which was bold to say the least. Engines don't like this move because of 17.Nf5 or even 17.h4, after Svidler's 17.Rf5? Carlsen's 17...Qe3+ led to a quick win. The second game was a much better game which finished in a draw, the final game three was a game Svidler thought so bad he didn't want to talk about it.

Anish Giri's failure to convert a rather large opening advantage against Nepomniachtchi was probably the key to the match, after that Giri had a bit of an opening disaster in game two where he was left to suffer and lose in 40 moves. Giri was also pressing in game three until his 26.Nc2? (26.Nb5!) when he went from winning to losing but by this stage Nepomniachtchi had a huge advantage on the clock as he essentially played in the increment whereas Giri had only a couple of minutes left.

Giri and Svidler must win on Saturday to take their matches into a final set.