The Week in Chess

The FIDE World Chess Championship got under way in Dubai on Friday 26th November. The match between World Champion Magnus Carlsen and his challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi will be over 14 classical games followed by a day of rapid and blitz tie-breaks if required.

The first game of the match was a reasonably tense affair with both players surely glad to get started. The pandemic has drastically reduced the amount of face to face chess in the last 18 months and that will surely affect both players but there has also been a revolution in chess preparation using AI and computers. This is generating masses of new ideas - in the recent past it's been hard to remember everything - we may now have gone past that point. This match will no doubt advance our knowledge as to where opening theory is right now. Daniil Dubov is working for Carlsen and he has been one of the players at the forefront of the new preparation ideas.

Today's game was a Closed Ruy Lopez - not a Berlin - most likely Carlsen was headed for a Marshall Defence if he'd been allowed, instead Nepomniachtchi avoided this with 8.h3 which was met by 8...Na5. This has been a rare move which has been played recently in correspondence chess it also seems to have been known by at least a few top players as a valid line for black. Carlsen finished his preparation a pawn down but with the two bishops as compensation - he admitted to being slightly concerned, most likely he hoped his opponent didn't find everything to the end. As it was Nepomniachtchi was a little better for the next few moves. 22.Bf4 was a misjudgment after which black equalised and perhaps was the one pressing. 27...Kf8?! was the next turning point (27...g6 is liked by computers much more although it still isn't much for black) then 30.Ne1?! (30.Ke2) and again black has a little edge - not more. It seems 40...Rd7?! (40...Nf4) was the final minor mistake leading to an almost immediate draw by repetition.

Games two and three will take place on Saturday and Sunday with the first rest day on Monday.