The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen won his match fairly comfortably against Ding Liren in a sixth round tie of Chess24's Legends of Chess that took place four hours earlier than the other matches. Carlsen was level with Ian Nepomniachtchi going into the round but he was taken to an Armageddon tie-break before winning his match against Viswanathan Anand and thus scored a point less. Vladimir Kramnik is in third place on 12 points and Peter Svidler and Anish Giri are on 11 points. It may well be that the four qualifiers come from these players.

Magnus Carlsen beat Ding Liren 2.5-1.5 in a match that was held four hours early. After an uneventful first game Carlsen struck in game two where Ding didn't get out of the opening. In a Semi-Slav the players followed Del Rio de Angelis against Korneev from 2007 - after 18.Bh5 Ding went wrong with 18...Nc5? and was just lost, Ding resigned a Rook up rather than have Carlsen demonstrate the final assault on his King. In game three Ding finally put Carlsen under pressure and the World Champion said he was glad to go into a Queen endgame a pawn down, he certainly seemed to hold it easily enough. In the final game Carlsen was better out of the opening but with a draw being as bad as a lost Ding was able to find complications which forced Carlsen to be accurate but in the end rather than push for a win Carlsen settled for a comfortable draw.

Later at the normal time Peter Leko pushed Giri but again lost game four to lose the match. Nepomniachtchi lost game four to Anand but was far too fast in the Armageddon games. In an up and down match Kramnik also won in an Armageddon against Boris Gelfand and Svidler likewise beat Vasyl Ivanchuk. This was a really excellent day of play.

Round 6 Sunday 26th July Anand 2-3 Nepomniachtchi Leko 1.5-2.5 Giri Gelfand 2-3 Kramnik Ding Liren 1.5-2.5 Carlsen Ivanchuk 2-3 Svidler

Round 6 Standings: 1 Magnus Carlsen 17pts, 2 Ian Nepomniachtchi 16pts, 3 Vladimir Kramnik 12pts, 4 Peter Svidler 11pts, 5 Anish Giri 11pts, 6 Boris Gelfand 7pts, 7 Vasyl Ivanchuk 6pts, 8 Peter Leko 4pts, 9 Viswanathan Anand 3pts, 10 Ding Liren 3pts.

Round 7 Monday 27th July 2020 3pm BST. Leko-Nepomniachtchi, Gelfand-Anand, Ding Liren-Giri, Ivanchuk-Kramnik, Svidler-Carlsen.