The Week in Chess

The Chessable Masters will have a third day of the quarterfinals after Hikaru Nakamura defeated Ding Liren in an Armageddon tie-break to level up their match but only after a huge wobble within sight of the winning post which meant he went from leading the contest to trailing following two consecutive losses. In the other match Anish Giri booked himself a semi-final clash with Ian Nepomniachtchi in a generally well controlled performance, although he was extremely dissatisfied with his opening play in the final game.

Hikaru Nakamura has reached the final of the two other Magnus Carlsen Grand Prix events so far losing to Carlsen and Daniil Dubov. Today Nakamura needed to beat Ding Liren to get match in the tie. After a draw in game one Nakamura won game two but this was after his position turned round from being much worse to winning in just a few moves. After a draw in game three Nakamura looked extremely comfortable in the final game but in a drawn rook endgame he didn't quite kill the game off and then blundered completely when one more accurate move would have surely just drawn. Nakamura then lost the first blitz game with white and looked a bit on tilt but his experience in blitz came through turning on the style in the second blitz game and then with a nasty move order trick getting a winning position right out of the opening in the Armageddon game. Ding and Nakamura will play again tomorrow for the right to meet Carlsen.

Anish Giri was celebrating his 26th birthday today and his win was achieved with a 3-1 score The first game was drawn but Giri had a nice win in game two. Game three was drawn but the final game four Giri said he mixed up two systems and ended up worse at some point. Giri was only winning after 26.Nxe1.

Tomorrow Ding vs Nakamura 3rd set is the only match. Semifinals start on Tuesday.