It was a day full of snow in Weissenhaus, and a day with another tough starting position to play with. Both knights were pretty terribly placed, weren’t they? It is interesting to note what happened in the playing hall, when the players learnt about which position they were going to play.

Firouzja and Gukesh were the only two players who decided to sit at their own boards and look at the new position for 10 minutes on their own. The others grouped together again, White players on one side of the playing hall, Black players on the other side. And then, when the arbiter started the round, the game Firouzja-Gukesh was the only one to have moves for the first few minutes! Nothing happened elsewhere for quite a while, as if the players who analyzed together confused each other too much.

In one of the commentary studios, Niclas Huschenbeth showed a tricky line from this position number 866 that can lead to a checkmate in just five moves: 1.c4 g6 2.c5!? (An idea Abdusattorov actually briefly mentioned during the 10-minute prep analysis) b6 3.c6!? Bxc6??

4.Rxc6! dxc6 5.Qd3#. Obviously, we didn’t get to see that today.

Abdusattorov was the first among ‘the others’ to move and went for 1.e4. Then his compatriot Sindarov played the same move, and finally it was Keymer spent the most time and eventually went for 1.c4.

Soon after the opening moves, the German grandmaster commented in the confession booth: “My feeling is that the starting position again was really, really dangerous for Black. White had many options, both 1.e4 and 1.c4 which were played, kind of very natural. The biggest problem was actually not the pawn on h7 but the pawn on f7 which is kind of only defendable by the knight on h8 which means Ng6 can be played only really late. In general there are so many threats against the quite weak kingside that I do believe that in general Black is running quite a lot of risk.”

Keymer-Caruana 1-0

The Cinderella story for Keymer continued as he won the first game of the final, and quite convincingly. Although Caruana told this author (PD) before he game that he slept reasonably well, it was hard to imagine that he didn’t still have that grueling match with Sindarov “in the legs.”

The players actually spent half an hour on the first three moves, further emphasizing how hard it was, and how much was at stake. Keymer then went into the confession booth. Apart from mentioning the starting position, he said: “The position I got in my game is also complete madness. My feeling was that it should be better for White.”

He didn’t think his queen on h7 was that bad, whereas his trainer Peter Leko wasn’t sure about that. Also in the commentator’s role today was Levon Aronian, who called Caruana’s 8…Rc5 the critical moment. The American GM had spent eight minutes on it, and Aronian said: “He should have spent more.” As it turned out, Caruana had completely overlooked 11.Rc2.

Somehow, all it took for Keymer was to make a series of very natural moves to reach a winning position. He left his opponent without a chance and made a big step towards possibly winning this tournament altogether!

Sindarov-Carlsen 0-1

Having to play for third place wasn’t what Carlsen was hoping for obviously, but nonetheless, he brought his A game to the board today as he defeated Sindarov convincingly. That was after another slight scare with the black pieces in a tricky opening position.

“1.c4 looked a bit unpleasant but then when 1.e4 appeared on the board, my first thought was: oh, this is even more unpleasant,” the winner said in the confession booth. He didn’t see anything better than what he did on the first two moves, even though it looked “incredible dangerous” to him if White would have gone 3.d4.

Carlsen then surprisingly sacrificed his f-pawn on move five. Aronian said he was a hundred percent sure Sindarov would take on f7, and called it “very strange” when he didn’t. Later, though, the American-Armenian grandmaster started praising Sindarov’s move 6.Rb1: “It has zero dogma in it, it’s just pure creativity!”

For a few more moves, the game remained more or less balanced, but at some point it started going Carlsen’s way. During a second visit to the confession booth, he said: “I think he’s drifted a lot in the last few moves and the ugly duckling of a bishop that I had hidden in the corner is about to become a beautiful swan.”

He thought that his opponent was “in a lot of trouble,” and that was definitely the case. Sindarov was very nervous and shaking a lot, as we also saw the other day. He did come up with some interesting tactical ideas, but Carlsen was too strong today and found all the strong replies to convert the full point in great style. Aronian: “I think Magnus just outclassed Sindarov.”

Abdusattorov-Nakamura 0-1

Nakamura was quite upset about his play after his loss to Sindarov in the quarterfinals, but since then, he seems to be back on track. In the first game of the match for fifth place, he outplayed Abdusattorov late in the endgame after some provocative opening play (3…Nf6, 4…Nh5).

About the opening in this game, Aronian provided another nice quote: “When we’re playing Chess960 we’re paranoid of the opponent taking control of the center while the computer doesn’t care. ‘Let him have the center, we’ll slowly attack it later.’ It is more the Réti approach.”

Nakamura at some point won a pawn, but played with two knights against two bishops so Abdusattorov had compensation, until a mistake on move 48. The way Nakamura continued after that was textbook endgame material: the theme of Zugzwang, despite the number of pieces that was still on the board. An excellent win, as he was finding perfect harmony with the knights.

Firouzja-Gukesh ½-½

Firouzja has suffered so many missed chances in this tournament already, and today was another one. In his match with Gukesh for seventh place, the Iranian-French grandmaster reached a winning endgame, but spoiled it with the trade of rooks.

As Leko put it, he got a bit “careless” as it was not difficult to find White’s winning attacking setup with rook, knight and pawn on the queenside. But indeed, that pawn-up endgame with knight vs. bishop looked winning as well, except that it wasn’t. What was a tough result to swallow for Firouzja was a relief for Gukesh.

On Friday at 13:00 p.m. CET play continues. It will be the last day of this year’s Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, with Caruana, Sindarov, and Abdusattorov in a must-win situation for their classical games. Once again, if matches end in a tie, a playoff with rapid, blitz and possibly Armageddon will be played.