The Week in Chess

Anish Giri won the Magnus Carlsen Invitational by defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final after a blitz tie-break. The match was extremely close with all four games being drawn on the first day and today there was a further sharp draw in game one before the deadlock was broken. Game two was a Taimanov Sicilian where Giri castled Queen side and then following 18...Nc6 (Ng6 had to be played) Giri got in 19.g6 shattering black's pawn structure in front of his King. Nepomniachtchi had to prioritise castle before it was too late but he lost material and was busted. Giri brought home the full point very securely. It was Giri's turn to have his King in trouble in game 3 but he had an exchange for his trouble and objectively he wasn't worse (the computers thought him better but it can't have been a fun position to play) and he got Queens off and into a drawn Rook endgame. Giri only needed a draw with the white pieces in the final rapid game but he didn't manage it. Giri was on the back foot almost from the start and quite lost soon after but on move 32.Qe2 would have put him right back in it. Instead he lost almost straight away. In the blitz tie-break Giri sacrificed a knight for an attack that didn't end up working. Nepomniachtchi however returned the favour - after the game he berated himself for spending time on 25...Rh7 a move he knew to be bad but which he played anyway. 25...Rg8 or 25...Qe8 were winning for him, instead he was busted. Giri also won the final tie-break game - the only game of their entire match that wasn't a Sicilian.

Finally a win in one of these events for Giri, in the first tour he lost to Carlsen in the final of the Chessable Masters and also lost a long match to Nepomniachtchi in the following Legends of Chess event. In the new Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Giri has lost to Carlsen in the first round of the Skilling Open final stages, didn't make it out of the prelims in the Airthings Masters and lost to Radjabov in the Opera Euro Rapid. With this win Giri has qualified for the tour final with this win, and now his and Nepomniachtchi's attention turns to the Candidates.

Magnus Carlsen beat Wesley So in the first game of their second set and that was enough to win the second set to add to his first win yesterday, thus Carlsen finished in third place. Wesley So still leads the tour, Carlsen has now moved into second place.

The organisers announced that there will be an online tour with Vladimir Kramnik and Judit Polgar captaining teams of young talented players and we'll see that fairly soon.