The Week in Chess

The first day of the Legends of Chess online rapid tournament hosted by Chess24 showed a lot of promise that the veteran players will be able to at least hold their own at this time control. 10 players play each other once each in a round robin of mini-matches of four games followed by an Armageddon Tie break if necessary. The top 4 will go on to play a knockout phase of best of three mini-matches.

Boris Gelfand produced the result of the day beating Ding Liren 3-1. After a first round draw Gelfand beat Ding in the second game with the black pieces after finding his way through a sharp tactical sequence that won three pawns which he managed to consolidate. In game three Gelfand was also winning in a bishops of opposite colour position but lost control in time trouble. In the final game he chose an extremely sharp variation when he needed a draw and Ding suffered a drastic defeat in 16 moves. After the game Gelfand revealed that he'd spent last week practicing at this time control which is very different to playing blitz online. Gelfand got very good at rapid chess in the World Cups he played in so he could be a factor in this tournament.

Magnus Carlsen won pretty easily against Anish Giri who never really seemed to get into the match and especially didn't seem to recover from the 7.g4 novelty launching a direct attack. Carlsen said he believed 11...h5 keeping things closed was totally necessary. Later on Carlsen missed a fairly trivial tactic to win immediately but brought home the point comfortably another way. Game three was an easy hold with black for Carlsen and Giri didn't have any real chances in the final game where he played the King's Indian and eventually lost.

Vladimir Kramnik had his chances against Ian Nepomniachtchi - he took the lead in game two with a short tactic that brought immediate resignation but he spoiled a good position to lose game three - game four was drawn. In the Armageddon Kramnik started well and won a pawn but admitted he never plays without increment and the time just disappeared leaving him to have to play almost randomly not to lose on time. He also said he didn't believe in flagging your opponent in lost position in Armageddon games, comments I'm sure noted by his opponents.

Peter Svidler beat Viswanathan Anand in a match where both sides had their chances, in particular Anand saved a lost Rook and Pawn endgame in the second game and in the final game Anand was better for much of the game, he let this advantage slip before getting it back again and finally in a messy position he was probably winning again but blundered his entire position away to lose instead.

Peter Leko easily held Vasyl Ivanchuk with black in a final Armageddon game but before this the players shared wins in games two and four with Leko exploiting some over optimism by Ivanchuk in game two to win but in game four he was roundly defeated in a King's Gambit in one of the games of the day.

Round 1 Standings (3 points for a win in 4 games, 2 points for an Armageddon win and 1 point for a loss in the Armageddon): 1st= Gelfand, Carlsen, Svidler 3pts, 4th= Leko, Nepomniachtchi 2pts, 6th= Kramnik, Ivanchuk 1pt, 8th= Anand, Giri, Ding Liren 0pts

Round 2 pairings 22nd July 2020 15:00pm: Nepomniachtchi1-Ding Liren, Ivanchuk-Gelfand, Svidler-Leko, Carlsen-Anand and Kramnik-Giri.