The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen and Peter Svidler retain perfect scores of nine from nince and Ian Nepomniachtchi won to be on 8 points in the third round of Chess24's Legends of Chess tournament.

Peter Leko came determined to put up a good showing against the World Champion Magnus Carlsen and he certainly did that. Leko had good positions out of the opening in all four games but failed to convert any of them into full points and then in the final game a horrible mouse slip cost him the match. Leko was absolutely winning in game three but a hurried 33.Re1? allowed Carlsen to equalise immediately with 33...Nf3+ and in the final game the mouse slip 22...Re6? (instead of the intended 22...Re7) and Leko was left with a terrible pawn structure he couldn't save after 23.f3.

Peter Svidler is the other player still on 100%. Today Svidler beat Boris Gelfand be winning game three where he was under severe pressure as Gelfand launched an attack on his King but didn't get it right and Svidler's Queen side counter attack proved decisive.

Viswanthan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik played a tremendous first game where Anand seemed on course for a brilliancy but needed undertake a rather scary looking King walk to win and chose something else. Kramnik fought hack to be winning but then further errors in time trouble gave Anand a final chance to win which he didn't take. Anand's final missed win was 63.Nf4 when there are no checks for Kramnik - instead Anand dropped a piece and the game. Anand lost game two without much of a fight and Kramnik got the draw he needed in game three. Anand could easily have been among the leaders with the chances he's had, instead he had no points. Ding Liren is also on no points after losing games two and four to Ivanchuk, Ding did win game three when Ivanchuk chose an extremely risky if not outright bad line but Ivanchuk won the final game in only 25 moves. Ding has played some fine online events, he seems completely out of sorts this time. Anish Giri had great if not winning positions in the first two games against Ian Nepomniachtchi but blundered to lose both of them and even in the final game he was the one pushing but he was held to a draw.

Round 3 standings: 1st= Carlsen, Svidler 9/9 points, 3rd Nepomniachtchi 8pts, 4th Gelfand 6 pts 5th= Kramnik, Ivanchuk 4pts, 7th Giri 3pts, 8th Leko 2pts, 9th= Anand, Ding 0pts.

Round 4 pairings: Nepomniachtchi-Ivanchuk, Svidler-Ding Liren, Carlsen-Gelfand, Kramnik-Leko, Giri-Anand.