The Semifinals

Against Caruana, Carlsen gradually built up the pressure in a balanced position. When Caruana missed his best chance to free himself, Carlsen took full control and converted his advantage to win the game and the match 1.5-0.5.

On the other board, Nakamura overcame early pressure from Keymer. The German had promising chances, but the h-side attack he had planned went nowhere after Nakamura castled a-side late in the game and took over. When Keymer had allowed a crucial queen trade in time trouble, Nakamura converted the endgame to secure the win and his place in the final, also with a score of 1.5-0.5.

For Keymer, the defeat ends his title defense in Paris after winning the Freestyle Grand Slam in Weissenhaus. On Sunday, he will face Caruana in the match for third place — a rematch of the Weissenhaus final.

Nakamura is looking forward to the final against his eternal rival: “It’s exciting to play Magnus. We’ve played so many times, we even played a Fischer Random match in 2018 in Norway, so I have a lot of experience against him. I’m just looking forward to it — it should be fun.”

Looking forward to facing Carlsen, Nakamura pointed out that, although they face each other so often, they might not have played any Chess960 since 2018. He said he won’t be changing his general approach for this special opponent: “I think it will be more of the same, just keep analyzing with Fabi and Nepo and hopefully good things happen.”

Arjun and MVL Win 5th Place Tiebreaks

In the 5th-place bracket, both matches went to tiebreaks. Arjun Erigaisi defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in both classical and rapid chess. After winning the first rapid game, Arjun held a difficult endgame with Black in game two to advance. The match winner liked the classical game best: “There were quite a few beautiful moments in that one.” (See annotated games below.)

This tiebreak match made the close friendship between Arjun and Praggnanandhaa visible. Before the match, Arjun had told his friend jokingly that it may help if he stays as a spectator. Pragg, who had just won his 9th-place match, complied in order to support Arjun, watching the tiebreak from a close distance. “I’m really happy to have such a friend,” Arjun said in his post-game interview with Fiona Steil-Antoni.

In the other tiebreak, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave beat Nodirbek Abdusattorov. MVL won his must-win classical game and completed the comeback in the rapid portion in two “very, very double-edged games,” as MVL remarked afterward.

Pragg Secures 9th Place

In the 9th-place match, Praggnanandhaa defeated Richard Rapport 1.5-0.5. Pragg had hoped for more than  9th, but was happy to have ended the competition on a high note. “It was a good experience to play classical time control in this format,” he noted. “I really need to work on how I develop my pieces with White. Somehow, in most of my games I ended up in worse positions from the opening,” Pragg added.

Today’s Position #4

Today’s starting position, drawn by tournament director Sebastian Siebrecht, was quite new for this tournament, but similar to one of the positions played a few months ago in Weissenhaus. There, we saw position #5 played out, the difference being a swap of Bb1 and Nd1.

The setup also suggested potentially sharp games, since both sides had their ‘diagonal pieces’, the queen and bishops, lined up alongside each other and looking toward the enemy king. Still, Keymer felt it was “quite solid for Black.”

Pre-game, the players had worked out that a “Queen’s Gambit” with a pawn break on move 2 wouldn’t work: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4! and black is fine at least. That’s why almost all games saw the same move, and that was once again 1.c4. Vachier-Lagrave was the first to play it before three others followed. In the confession booth, Carlsen joked: “We’ve got to find a new chess variant. This game has become so dominated by preparation, so monotonous — you see, three of the games are in the same position!”

Keymer, however, once again spent the most time of everyone on his first move and played 1.d4 nevertheless. It might have been the best choice. “How does he do it, every time!” wondered commentator David Howell.

In the ten minutes he used for his first move, Keymer had worked out a “Freestyle Zukertort Queen’s Gambit” by going 1.d4 d5 2.b3 to be followed by 3.c4. As it turned out, this was exactly what Nakamura, Caruana, and Nepomniachtchi had felt uneasy about in their pre-game analysis. “And of course, Vincent played exactly that,” Nakamura explained after the game.

Carlsen vs. Caruana 1-0

As it became clear in the interview before the game, Caruana wasn’t in top shape physically: his voice revealed a cold, and indeed, earlier in the tournament he had been feeling under the weather. He wasn’t too frightened about it.

“I’m still not feeling great physically but I’ve been in that position before sometimes. What can you do, it’s out of your control sometimes, if you’re traveling around a lot, you can be exposed to something. (…) I’ve never noticed that it kills your chess, unless you’re really sick and you just can’t.”

Carlsen made a second visit to the confession booth in just the first half hour, showing a fun line, not as long as yesterday but also that would have ended in a quick checkmate (see game analysis). “Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t that great,” he said. “I think by now, all of the players have probably spotted that trick and the smothered mate is so irresistible that we’re all looking for it in every position which is probably not very healthy!”

After 11.h4 Carlsen was happy with his play, and also happy with a third visit to the confession booth. “I think my position is overwhelming here, like, gaining a lot of space and his pieces are being kicked around. They’re quite passive.”

White was doing well indeed, but allowing the endgame wasn’t necessary perhaps and for a while Caruana was hanging on. 26…Nb8 was a mistake though, after which Carlsen won smoothly, despite one mistake on his turn, missed by Caruana.

Keymer vs. Nakamura 0-1

Once again getting close to playing the final, Keymer felt “quite good and also surprisingly calm” before the game. “Maybe it’s because things have been going quite well and also, the feeling is clear that I can’t do much to prepare for the game, so I just came here as fresh as possible and I will now give my very best to play as good as I can.”

“He’s got not only the depth and the knowledge, but that mental resilience, that will, and the skill to push it till the end when it matters,” said Anish Giri, a commentator in the broadcast today, about Keymer.

Early in the game, Keymer confessed: “His king will be quite weak; I think castling will be incredibly tough for him. (…) My attack is not really something I’m really hoping to crash through directly, but it’s more of a long-term idea to kind of tie down as many defenders as possible and make the development of this h8-rook a little difficult. In general, I would say I’m quite happy with the position, but it’s double-edged.”

That attack indeed never really came about, for the simple fact that Nakamura could still castle a-side, and so he did. It was the moment when the tables turned, and the American grandmaster was now the one with attacking chances. “What I don’t like about White’s position is that he can’t touch Black,” said Giri around here.

“At some point Vincent tried too hard,” Nakamura continued. “He played this 9.h4 move which I think was bad to begin with and then it kind of went downhill because I was able to queenside castle and it’s just a tough position to play.”

Arjun vs. Nepomniachtchi 1-0

After similar moves as in other games, Nepomniachtchi’s decision to attack White’s queen on d4 with Nd8-c6 was not approved by the computer. He spent his next moves trying to find a good setup, but after Arjun’s (very) long castling on move nine, it became clear that White had a very promising position already.

Perhaps somewhat carelessly, Nepomniachtchi then allowed the unexpected but pretty move 12.Qd8! – a spectacular way of getting the queen into enemy territory.

Black really needed the move …h7-h5 there but as it went, Nepomniachtchi’s king’s position started to look like Swiss cheese. Black was surprisingly helpless as White’s attack became too strong. Some nice sacrifices were the prelude to a checkmate sequence. Before the black queen had made a single move, Nepomniachtchi had to resign and Arjun was the first to secure a tiebreak.

Praggnanandhaa vs. Rapport 1-0

It was Rapport who was better in the first half of the game, thanks to an interesting, “Benko Gambit” style pawn sacrifice in the opening. With four pawns in the center, the Hungarian grandmaster was close to winning on move 22, but there he made a big calculation mistake when he pushed his c-pawn. Did he miss 26.Red1? Suddenly, Praggnanandhaa was just winning, and he easily converted.