The Week in Chess

Anish Giri beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in a blitz tie-break to win his semifinal match 2 sets to 1 and go through to face World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the final of the Chessable Masters starting tomorrow.

Anish Giri has transformed his play in online chess since the start of the lock down and a 3-1 beating by Jorden van Foreest. In the first Magnus Carlsen invitational in April he came 7th of 8 in the preliminary stage and looked a long way short of the required standard to compete for any titles. Giri has since put serious time into playing events such as Chess.com's Titled Tuesday and the PNWCC Online Jackpot events. His MrDodgy Invitational win in mid-June was a very good sign. Prior to this Nepomniachtchi would have been a strong favourite to win such a match, especially when it came down to blitz chess, but Giri had the better of the blitz and won the second game to go through. Afterwards Giri quite rightly pointed out that Carlsen has looked extremely impressive in defeating Caruana and Ding but he looks in good enough shape to give Carlsen a match.

Giri was beaten in the first rapid game of the day - he turned down a sacrificed piece and ended up with a very bad position but after Nepomniachtchi missed a beautiful forced win with 23.Rh8+ Giri had a couple of to save the game after that but went on to lose. After that game however Giri hit his stride showing impressive tactical sharpness in finding a hidden tactic that won a piece in game two. Nepomniachtchi was pressing in game three but gradually Giri equalised, and game four was drawn without much drama. In the blitz games Giri was briefly a bit better as black but the game was pretty balanced after that. The final game saw very sharp play from Nepomniachtchi with 23...h4 being quickly turned into a major advantage by Giri, nevertheless Nepomniachtchi retained dangerous attacking possibilities even as Giri broke through with his own attack, Giri finally won by spotting that his queen was defending backwards along the diagonal which allowed him to grab a lot of material and still fend off an attack, he gave mate against black's defenceless king as it was driven to mate in the middle of the board.

The Carlsen - Giri final starts tomorrow 3rd July and can run to the 5th July if required.