The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen won a seventh match to extend his lead over Ian Nepomniachtchi by a point in round 7 of the preliminary stage of the Chess24 Legends of Chess. Nepomniachtchi was taken to an Armageddon tie-break for the second day in a row but he also has won all his matches. Anish Giri moved into third place with two rounds to go. The players are fighting for four places in the final knockout stages of the event which will decide the winner.

Magnus Carlsen beat Peter Svidler 2.5-1.5 in a match which he dominated but couldn't put the 8 time Russian Champion away until the fourth game. Viswanathan sounded relieved to win his first match against his former World Championship Challenger 2.5-0.5. Vasyl Ivanchuk has a record of becoming very motivated against Vladimir Kramnik and today was no exception, he beat the former World Champion comfortably 3-1 even after losing the third round game. Ding Liren has to play via a VPN and this has caused disconnects at quite frequent intervals. Today one of his two losses was this way against Anish Giri. Peter Leko did very well to take Ian Nepomniachtchi to an Armageddon tie-break but the gulf in experience in online blitz meant Leko had very little chance.

Round 7 results Leko 2-3 Nepomniachtchi Gelfand 0.5-2.5 Anand Ding Liren 0.5-2.5 Giri Ivanchuk 3-1 Kramnik Svidler 1.5-2.5 Carlsen

Round 7 Standings: 1 Magnus Carlsen 20pts, 2 Ian Nepomniachtchi 18pts, 3 Anish Giri 14pts, 4 Vladimir Kramnik 12pts, 5 Peter Svidler 11pts, 6 Vasyl Ivanchuk 9pts, 7 Boris Gelfand 7pts, 8 Viswanathan Anand 6pts, 9 Peter Leko 5pts, 10 Ding Liren 3pts.

Round 8 Tuesday 28th July 2020 pairings: Nepomniachtchi-Carlsen Kramnik-Svidler Giri-Ivanchuk Anand-Ding Liren Leko-Gelfand