Back from a Break!
"Check." is back, and so is the Candidates' Tournament. Here's our preview of the action.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for this author, professionally, as loyal readers of Check. might have noticed. (I assume you all await new emails from Substack with bated breath. In the future, please consult a medical professional before holding your breath for weeks at a time) But our hiatus has nothing on FIDE’s Candidates’ Tournament, which began in Yekaterinburg, Russia on the 18th of March, 2020, before being suspended on the 25th of March, 2020, at its halfway point, due to the global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The tournament is only now set to resume on Monday April 19th, and the chess world is abuzz.
It must be said that the pandemic has done awe inspiring things for chess. For one, there’s been a veritable boom in signups for online chess websites including lichess.org, chess.com, and chess24. The pandemic freed up a tremendous amount of time in our schedules for hobbies, and then the Netflix special “The Queen’s Gambit,” made chess sexy again (same as it ever was). This very newsletter started as a sort of “pandemic passion project” as your author rediscovered his own love for the game, which had waxed and waned, periodically, since childhood. And then there’s been a boom in chess streaming on twitch, twitch viewership, generally, and all of the drama attendant to that.
Magnus Carlsen’s company, the Play Magnus Group, successfully launched the Champions Chess Tour: a series of 9 professional E-Sports events played online, at rapid time controls, and featuring a who’s who of the elite players in the world, along with the champion himself, Magnus Carlsen. And FIDE managed to pull off the 2020 Chess Olympiad, Online, with only a modicum of controversy related to disconnections, mouse-slips, and cheating accusations. But there is nothing quite like a Candidates’ Tournament, played at classical time controls, over-the-board and face to face, between the absolute best chess Grandmasters in the entire world, who are each vying for the opportunity to challenge Magnus Carlsen to a match for the undisputed title of World Champion. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for some of the participants, and it’s rare enough for the others that I can guarantee you, they are taking it seriously.
It’s good to be back.
Without further ado, our preview of the upcoming action (and our review of the rounds that have already been played…).
Where and When?
The Candidates’ is set to resume in the same place where it was suspended, Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Monday, April 19th, at 4pm local time (GMT +5). For those of you located in the Eastern Time Zone of the U.S., that would be 7:00am. The time control for the games is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20, and a 15 minute sudden death time control for the rest of the game. There is a 30 second increment added after every move from the very start of the game. That means each round can be expected to last just over 5 hours, though we can be sure that more than one slugfest during this event will require more than 6. One round is played each day, with rest days currently scheduled for Wednesday, April 21st, and Sunday April 25th. Should tie breaks be required, they will be held on Wednesday, April 28th, the day after the final round is completed.
For the visually inclined:
April 19th, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 8
April 20th, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 9
April 21st: Rest Day
April 22nd, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 10
April 23rd, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 11
April 24th, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 12
April 25th: Rest Day
April 26th, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 13
April 27th, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Round 14
April 28th, 16:00 local time, 7:00 am ET: Tiebreaks (if necessary) and Closing Ceremonies
All of the usual suspects will be streaming live analysis of the games, but Magnus himself will be joining Judit Polgar, Tania Sachdev, and David Howell on the commentary team for Chess24. After all, his company owns the site.
Chess.com/TV will have former world champion Viswanathan Anand alongside Danny Rensch, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So, and Robert Hess for commentary.
Kostya Kavutskiy will be handling the coverage on behalf of the St. Louis Chess Club:
And honestly, if you have a favorite chess streamer or YouTube personality, check their page. I’d be willing to bet they’ll be doing something in conjunction with the event. Previews, reviews, analysis, discussion. If you want it, you’ll get it.
Why?
WHY NOT!
Who?
The field is stacked. It’s the Candidates’ Tournament to see who faces Magnus for the World Championship; of course it is. Though, it is worth remembering that qualifying for this tournament is a bit of a byzantine process with a few who qualify by winning or finishing runner-up in qualifier events (The World Cup, The FIDE Grand Swiss, and the FIDE Grand Prix Series), one who qualifies by rating, one wild card chosen by the tournament organizer, and an alternate (Maxime Vachier-Lagrave), who was 2nd on the rating list after all the other qualifiers had been chosen, and received an official invitation when Teimour Radjabov, who won the 2019 World Cup, withdrew from the tournament in protest of the fact that it was being held in person during a global pandemic. It’s frankly a travesty that Radjabov’s principled (correct) stance was vindicated with the benefit of hindsight, and foresight, and common sense, but that he was mocked for it, at the time. That the candidates will resume with the players who showed up in Yekaterinburg last year, and no Radjabov in sight is a personal tragedy for the Azeri, and a glaring reminder of the role that fortune plays in all of our lives and careers. It is also worth remembering that all of this qualifying happened way back in 2019, and the rating lists have shuffled about quite a bit since then, as some players have rounded into form, while others have floundered during the pandemic.
Appearing in Yekaterinburg tomorrow, in order of their current live Elo ratings, are:
World #2 Fabiano Caruana of the United States. “Fabi” was an automatic qualifier, and the reigning tournament champion. In 2018 Fabi won the candidates and the right to face Magnus Carlsen in a WC match. He lost that match in rapid tiebreaks after drawing each of the classical games, but he will be looking to prove that he’s still Magnus’s top challenger.
World #3 Ding Liren of China. 28 years old, Liren is already a 3-time Chinese chess champion. He qualified for the Candidates as the runner up during the 2019 Chess World Cup.
World #4 Ian Nepomniatchi of Russia. Ian is a two time Russian Champion, and the reigning champion, to boot, having won the 2020 Russian Superfinal held in Moscow last December. He’s a dangerous, tactical player, who qualified for the Candidates’ by finishing second in the 2019 FIDE Grand Prix Series.
World #6 Alexander Grischuk of Russia. “Sasha” qualified by winning the 2019 Grand Prix. At 37 years old, he’s one of the elder statesmen at this event, and one of it’s most experienced veterans. He’s played in 5 different Candidates tournaments, but never earned the right to challenge the world champion in match play at classical time controls. Speaking of time controls, Sasha is a time trouble addict, who’s ponderously slow play early in games always leaves him with but few minutes on the clock and many moves to go before the time control. It’s a good thing he doesn’t mind playing fast; he’s a 3-time world champion in blitz. If you self identify as a procrastinator, or someone who “does best under pressure and tight deadlines,” Sasha is your spirit animal.
World #7 Anish Giri of the Netherlands. Nearly universally recognized as the world champion of chessic social media, Anish has always seemed to maintain good humor with regard to his chess results, which has been made challenging by his tendency to come up just short in super tournaments. For the longest time, his reputation was, “the best never to win a super tournament,” which has provided more fodder than the trolls online really need in order to offend. Recently though, Giri has been rounding into form. He finished second (har, har) after an Armageddon-style tiebreak in Wijk aan Zee earlier this year, before winning the 2021 Magnus Carlsen Invitational held in March. And make no mistake, the Magnus Chess Tour may not be FIDE rated classical play, but the MC Invitational was, truly, a super tournament. There is nobody in the Candidates’ field on a better run of current form than Anish.
World #12 Wang Hao of China. Wang Hao qualified for this tournament by winning the 2019 FIDE Grand Swiss, making him the second Chinese player, with his compatriot Ding Liren, to have qualified for a Candidates’ Tournament. Wikipedia mentions that Wang learned chess by accident, having arrived at a local youth center for an appointment with the center’s Xiangqi trainer, who failed to show. Somebody there taught him chess instead, and what a happy accident that was for the rest of us. Clearly the scale of Wang’s talent is immense, but his results have been, perhaps, more volatile than the other players on this list. After becoming a Grandmaster straight away at the age of 16 in 2005, without ever even achieving IM norms, Wang Hao skyrocketed to the top of the chess world. But in 2015, he seemed to hit a run of bad form, and in some interviews questioned whether playing chess professionally was truly his life’s passion. His rating dipped below the 2700 threshold that defines modern super GM’s, and stayed there until 2017 when he began is climb back to the top. In recent years, Wang Hao has not represented the Chinese team in Olympiad competitions, ceding his place to younger talents. And despite all of that, he won the 2019 Grand Swiss, a tournament which was unquestionably the strongest Swiss-style tournament of all time, which earned him a spot in the Candidates’, and which has helped propel him back into the world’s top 20.
World #15 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France. MVL is noted for several distinctions, not least of which: at the halfway point, with the tournament set to resume tomorrow, he is tied with Nepomniatchi for the lead with 4.5/7.0 and one of the betting favorites to win the whole thing. He’s well known for his opening repertoire, which is one of the narrowest arsenals in elite chess. Maxime sports a quiver with exactly two arrows in it: The Najdorf Sicilian, and the Grunfeld Defense. With the black pieces, he plays the Najdorf against 1. e4 and the Grunfeld against 1. d4 against all comers, in all competitions and situations. While it’s certainly true that he’s not surprising his opponents with his preparation very often, it must be said that there is no greater expert in the entire world on the two openings. To everyone’s great surprise then, Maxime appears to have been suffering, as of late, in the Najdorf. His result at the Tata Steel Masters event, where Giri shared first place with his countryman Van Foreest, was infamously abysmal. MVL finished 13th out of 14 participants with 5.0/13, lost 26 rating points, and left his backers scratching their heads, hoping he would be able to return to form for the conclusion of the candidates.
World #42 Kirill Alekseenko of Russia. Last, and least, by Elo rating, is the Russian Organizer’s wildcard selection Kirill Alekseenko, who is a local talent that has a bright future ahead of himself at 23 years old. Of course, despite the fact that he’s in the world’s top 50, he’s a longshot in this tournament who is really playing with nothing to lose.
Predictions?
Of course! But first, it’s important to put things in the proper context. This tournament is already halfway over, you see! The current cross table looks like this:
Courtesy of Wikipedia
MVL, who will be looking to reverse his current form, sits atop the table courtesy of his head to head score against Nepomniatchi. He won their game, playing with the white pieces, but he will have to take up the black pieces against his 2nd highest rated rival in the second half of the event. So too, will MVL have to defend with black against his highest rated rival, Fabiano Caruana, who mercilessly pummeled MVL’s Najdorf defense at the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee. Against Giri, Wang, and Alekseenko, MVL will have the white pieces. Against Grischuk and Ding, he’ll have the second move.
Nepomniatchi seems to have an easier run out. He has white against MVL with his fate in his own hands, white against Caruana, Giri, and Alekseenko. The final game is one that Nepo will be trying desperately to win in order to keep pace with the favorites at the top of the table. He has the black pieces against Grischuk and Ding, just as MVL does, and will also have the second move against Wang, who he defeated during the first half of the event.
Of the chase group who sit on an even score (3.5/7), Caruana stands out as a heavy favorite from the oddsmakers, most likely due to his experience winning this event in 2018. He’s followed by Giri, fourth in the minds of the bookies, in part because of his history of falling short, and in part because he’s a point off the lead as things stand. As mentioned previously, however, Giri’s form is excellent. Nobody in the field can claim to have better recent results than Anish. What’s more, he has the white pieces against heavy underdogs Alekseenko, Ding, and Wang during the second half of the tournament. Of course, he’ll have to defend with the black pieces against each one of Nepo, MVL, and Caruana, which is no small feat to accomplish. Fabi, in contrast, will be pleased that he has the white pieces against both MVL and Giri during the second half of the tournament.
If I have to make a prediction, which I do, because I promised in the header of this very section: I predict that Ian Nepomniatchi will be the winner of the event and the next challenger for Magnus Carlsen in a World Championship match. Given the circumstances of the event, I have a heavy bias to reward players who have demonstrated a strong recent form, and Nepomniatchi fits the bill, having just won a Russian Championship where both Sergey Karjakin and Daniil Dubov demonstrated that they were in excellent form. What’s more, Nepo has a head start, a point ahead of the entire field (excepting MVL), and he’s got the easier time of it in the second half, with the white pieces in more critical match ups.
I predict that Anish will give him a run for his money and come up just short, again, on the strength of his recent results, but somewhat handicapped by the fact that he’s (only) a point behind the leaders. While Fabi’s experience in the 2018 Candidates must be invaluable, it must also be said that he’s had the least practice against the rest of this field during the pandemic. Fabiano famously performs best at classical time controls, and has preferred to sit out a number of online-only blitz and rapid play events. It would be one thing to say that he’s laser focused on performing well in classical over the board chess, which I don’t doubt, but there have been precious few opportunities to test your playing shape in person over the past year.
Last, but not least, I do predict that MVL will miss the podium. His recent results are just too difficult to ignore. But I must also confess that as a Grunfeld adherent myself, I would be absolutely delighted for the Frenchman to prove me wrong, and I will be watching his games during the event with, perhaps, an extra bit of interest. I should also mention, since we care about the human side of chess at Check., that MVL seems like a really solid dude. He writes a blog about his performances and his preparations, which can be found here, that I find sort of refreshing. It would be easier, one imagines, just not to write a post after an event like Tata Steel, but we got one anyway. Either way, I expect we will hear from MVL after this one - if he regains his form, or indeed, even if he doesn’t.
Which brings us to our game of the week - the game that put us in this position, from all the way back in March of 2020: in the penultimate (for the time being) round 7 of the 2020-2021 Candidates’ tournament, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave defeated Ian Nepomniatchi with the white pieces in order to gain a share of the lead one round before the halfway point, when the ill fated tournament would be suspended. A couple of key positions from the game:
Game of the Week #25:
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs. Ian Nepomniatchi, (1-0), 2020 Candidates’ Tournament, Rd. 7, Yekaterinburg, Russia
e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. a3 Bxc3 6. bxc3 Ne7 7. h4 Qc7 8. h5 h6 9. Rb1 (diagram)
Rb1 is already quite a rare move, but MVL was still in his preparation at this point. Recalling that his opponents sometimes vary their own opening choices, MVL did mention after this game that he was not actually expecting a French defense from Nepo, but that he had prepared this for an earlier round with Alekseenko.
… b6 10. Qg4 Rg8?! (In this position, Wesley So tried 10. … Kf8 against Dominguez-Perez, which feels right to me. Candidly, I’m not sure that 10. … Rg8 is dubious, but if the king is going to be forced to f8 anyway, why not go straight away?)
Bb5+!? the bishop “wants” to go to d3, where it threatens Bh7 and Qxg7, but this check is inserted in an attempt to goad black into playing 11. … Bd7, depriving the bishop of the right to develop to the a6-f1 diagonal via the a6 square. A previous game, Bartel-Jaroch actually went 11. … Bd7? and black got into hot water relatively quickly: 12. Bd3 Nf5 13. Qf4 Nc6?? 14. Bxf5 exf5 15. e6! Qxf4 16. exd7+ Kxd7 17. Bxf4 and Bartel converted his extra piece.
… Kf8!? A logical novelty, given the result of the previous game, but now why is the rook on g8?
Bd3 Ba6 13. dxc5 Bxd3 14. cxd3 Nd7 15. d4 bxc5 16. Qd1 Qa5 17. Bd2 Rb8 18. Ne2 c4? (diagram)
After the game, MVL criticized the decision to close the center, while admitting that it is often fine for black in such structures. Here, white is too quick to generate play with g4 and f4 on the king’s wing, while black’s queenside counterplay is slow to develop. The computer seems to agree, suggesting 18. … Rxb1!? 19. Qxb1 Qa6, in an attempt to keep white off of the infiltration squares for long enough to play Ke8-d8-c7, but that all feels so painfully slow that it might be difficult for a human player to go in for such a plan. The problem Nepo faced was that he can’t get his king off the back rank before white is able to open the center with dxc5, so he closed the center, thinking, one supposes, that it would be the lesser of two evils. That black is one tempo short here seems to be a further indictment of the sequence 10. … Rg8?! and 11. … Kf8, rather than simply 10. … Kf8.
0-0 Rb6 20. Qc2 Rh8?? (diagram)
But this move really is nonsensical. All of this is so that Nepo can get his king off the back rank and bring the g8 (now h8) rook into play. Clearly, he was worried that after 20. … Nc6 21. Qh7!? the king is tied down to the defense of the g8 rook. But the queen isn’t doing anything on h7 either, so it seems to be a sort of moot point. White has a clear plan to play a4, Bc1-a3, threaten Bxe7 and push on the kingside with f4 and g4. Black might have been able to forestall this somewhat by way of 20. … Nb8!? intending 21. a4 Nbc6!? when black will leave a knight on e7 and hope to play Ke8-d7, at which point he will finally be able to develop the poor rook. After 20. … Rh8?? it’s hard to say exactly where black goes from “much worse” to “absolutely lost,” but in a few moves Nepo’s position has deteriorated markedly:
a4 Ke8 22. Rb4 Nc6 23. f4 Ne7 (23. … Nxb4? 24. cxb4 Qa6 25. b5 Qc8 26. f5 is no fun for black) 24. Rfb1 f5 25. Rb5 Qa6 26. Bc1 Kf7 27. Ba3 Rhb8 (finally) 28. Bxe7 Kxe7 29. g4 (diagram)
Here, black seems to be totally lost. White will open up the kingside to great effect.
… Rxb5 30. axb5 Rxb5 31. gxf5 Rxb1+ 32. Qxb1 exf5 33. Ng3 (a nice point - it’s better to take on f5 with the knight. The white queen watches over the queenside and ties the black queen down to the defense of b7) 33. … Qb6 34. Nxf5+ Kf8 35. Qa1 Qe6 36. Ng3 Qg4 37. Kg2 Qxf4 38. Qxa7 Ke7 39. Qa3+ Kd8 40. Qd6 g5 41. hxg6 h5 42. g7 (diagram)
Nepomniatchi resigned. 1-0, and what a game from MVL. What a stumble for Nepo, who had a brilliant event, otherwise, during the first 7 rounds of the candidates. It is as a result of this game that MVL maintains a share of the lead as we resume, tomorrow, after the break.
As far as Check. is concerned, I can’t promise recaps of the action every day, but do look out for extra content from me during the Candidates. I’ll be watching, just like (I assume) everyone else will be.
A Solution to “Last Week’s” Puzzle:
And because there will be lots of content over the week to come, I don’t have a puzzle at the moment, but I do have a solution for Puzzle of the Week #26:
Rxf5! and white wins the knight free and clear. If 1. … Qxf5 2. Ne7+ with a royal fork, and of course, the g6 pawn is pinned.
As always, if you enjoy these emails, do smash like and subscribe. It’s free! And forward them along to anyone else you know who might be interested. If you have questions or comments for me, please do not hesitate to reach out. I do check the comment section, and I can be reached at JensenUVA@gmail.com and @JensenUVA on twitter.
Let me know who you’re backing in the Candidates’, and why!