The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in an Armageddon tie-break game to win a match that could have gone either way. Alireza Firouzja won his second match in a row defeating Anish Giri.

Carlsen had to work hard for his victory against Nepomniachtchi. In game one he suffered an embarrassing loss when he forgot what to do in his surprise weapon line vs the Sicilian, namely 5.Bc4. Nepomniachtchi played the critical moves 5...Nxe4 6.Qh5 e6 and Carlsen said he simply stared at the board and couldn't remember what he was supposed to play (7.Bb5+ is really the only move and Carlsen said it's OK for white). Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, Carlsen had to choose something and played 7.Nxe6? giving up a piece for not enough compensation and resigned on move 28. In game two Carlsen was under severe pressure for the first half of the game but turned it round to a winning position only to let Nepomniachtchi off with a draw after missing an important check within sight of victory. In game 3 Carlsen obtained a massive advantage out of the opening and converted this to a win quite comfortably. Game four was drawn but only after Carlsen survived a pretty difficult position. Carlsen surprisingly chose white in the Armageddon which meant he had to win. He didn't achieve any advantage but the game went the full distance and in the endgame Nepomniachtchi didn't have sufficient time to defend a drawn position and eventually lost.

Firouzja won a lively match against Giri, winning game one, losing game two after having a winning advantage, winning game three with a beautiful mating idea in the endgame after earlier having survived a worse position, the final game was drawn.

Round 6 Standings: Carlsen (from 6 matches) 13pts, Nakamura (5) 11pts, Ding (5) 11pts, Caruana (5) 10pts, Nepomniachtchi (6) 6pts, Firouzja (6) 6pts, Vachier-Lagrave (5) 5pts and Giri (6) 4pts

Round 6 Day 2 pairings Wed 29th April 2020 Nakamura-Ding, Caruana-MVL