The Week in Chess

Ding Liren recovered from his setback in the second set to emerge a convincing winner in the final set of games against Hikaru Nakamura in their quarterfinal Chessable Masters clash. With a 2.5-0.5 win Ding set up a semi-final match with Magnus Carlsen. Ding had one day one but Nakamura had recovered to level up the match yesterday.

Following a draw in game one where Nakamura held fairly comfortably as black Ding dominated rest of the day and Nakamura seemed a little off the pace. Nakamura had the white pieces in game two and was slowly outplayed in a Ruy Lopez Berlin Defence but even when he had only Bishop, Knight and Pawn for Queen Nakamura could have put up much stiffer resistance as his position was a fortress which needed to be broken down, 48.h5? was a mistake that made Ding's task relatively easy, he admitted afterwards he hadn't worked a way to win before this error. In the final game 3 Nakamura played the King's Indian and although he rightly had the reputation as a fearsome player of this defence he was thoroughly outplayed and towards the end he had a really horrid position.

Semifinals start on Tuesday 3pm BST. Carlsen-Ding and Giri-Nepomniachtchi.