CHESS #1399

The semi-finals lineup in the Magnus Invitational is Ding Liren vs Magnus Carlsen, and Hikaru Nakamura vs Fabiano Caruana. It’s been anything but a smooth progression. Carlsen lost two matches, to Anish Giri (who also beat Caruana) and Ding. Ding lost in extra-time in Armageddon to Nakamura and Caruana, while Nakamura lost an Armageddon to Carlsen and to Caruana.

The dark horse has been Caruana, who only started taking speed formats seriously after it cost him a world title match. While “Don Fabiano” was beaten by Carlsen here, apart from losing to Giri, he won quite a few tight matches as well.  Of course, the hot favourite remains Carlsen despite his 1-3 meltdown versus Ding and his loss to Giri.

While most players take liberties in terms of playing high-risk openings and borderline tactics in speed play, Carlsen carries this to extremes in his “Dr Drunkenstein” persona. That is one of the many handles that he has used playing anonymously.

Carlsen played obscure lines of the Scandinavian Defence and the Kings Gambit. His match with Ding turned into a disaster. It went so badly that Alexander Grischuk suggested Carlsen deliberately lost in order to try and avoid playing Ding in the semis.

Of course, that didn’t happen and the revenge “match” could be fascinating. Will Carlsen repeat the same experiments or pull out another set of weird openings? It’s worth noting Ding has worked with Carlsen as a second, which means that there could be method to the world champion’s apparent madness: He doesn’t want to play the standard repertoire they may have analysed. Given that it’s hit the knockout stage, Carlsen is less likely to indulge in wild experiments.

The Nakamura-Caruana match could be fascinating in other ways. Nakamura is an acknowledged speed fiend with a terrific record at fast chess. Caruana isn’t comfortable at high speed according to received wisdom. However, they did play a speed match a couple of years ago and Caruana won. He won again in the league stage of this event, tying the rapids and taking the Armageddon.

At The Diagram, White to play (White: Ding Vs Black: Carlsen, Game 3, League, Magnus Invitational 2020), White has only one decent move. He played 15. Rxe5! Bxe5 ?! Maybe 15.—O-O 16. Qh4 f6 17. Qxh5 fg5 18. Bd3 Rxf2 19. Qh7+ Kf7 20. Qh5+ forcing a perpetual is the best option but black is behind in the match.

The game finished 16. Qxf7+ Kd8 17. Ba3 a6 18. Rd1 Kc8 19. Rxd7 Bh2+ 20. Kh1 axb5 21. Rxc7+ Bxc7 22. Nxe6 Be5 23. Bf8 Bc6 24. Bxg7 Bd6 25. Bxh8 Rxa2 26. Qg8+ Kd7 27. Nf8+ (1-0). 

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Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player