Ding Liren leads with 10/12 after Day 1 of the Airthings Masters, the first event of the 2022 season of the $1.6 million Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. The players took the fighting chess message to heart, with just 9 draws in 32 games, as Magnus Carlsen suffered a first day meltdown. After a good start against Vladislav Artemiev he struggled against Nodirbek Abdusattorov before losing to both Tour debutant Andrey Esipenko and World Championship challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi. Hans Niemann, Eric Hansen and Vincent Keymer all impressed as higher-rated rivals struggled.
The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour is back!
You can replay all the games from the 2022 Airthings Masters Prelims using the selector below.
And here’s the day’s live commentary from Tania Sachdev and Peter Leko…
…and from Kaja Snare, Jovanka Houska and David Howell.
The absence of Ding Liren from the biggest chess events has been one of the major ways in which the pandemic has hit top-level chess. The Chinese no. 1 and world no. 3 didn’t play the World Cup, or the Grand Swiss, and then recently failed to get a visa in time to travel to the FIDE Grand Prix in Berlin. It means there’s almost no chance the 29-year-old will get to play the next Candidates Tournament.
Online chess doesn’t have that travel issue and was a chance to see Ding Liren in action, but he was facing another issue… the clock! In his time zone the games would start at 1am and go on until around 5am.
The Airthings Masters players are spread all around the world — here 4 minutes before the games began
Midway through the first round you feared for the Chinese star, who found himself in a lost position against 17-year-old Vincent Keymer. We needn’t have worried, though, since Ding kept fighting, equalised the position, and then rejected the chance to repeat moves for a draw, since he realised his young opponent had a very difficult task ahead despite an extra piece.
In the end it was Ding who prevailed, in 77 moves.
His hunger to play was obvious as he also played the last game to finish in Round 2, a 74-move draw against Hans Niemann, before winning his remaining two games.
He comprehensively outplayed 16-year-old Praggnanandhaa with the black pieces and then finished by winning a tricky ending against Liem Quang Le.
The Vietnamese no. 1 should have played 36…Kf8!, when Ding would have nothing better than taking a draw (37.Rgb7 Re1! defends), but after 36…Kh8? 37.Rgb7 Rc8, a sad necessity, Ding was able to stop the f-pawn, pick up the h6-pawn and ease to victory.
That successful day at the office had another notable consequence. On the newly-introduced Tour ratings list, starting based on classical ratings but then updating every game, Ding Liren had leapfrogged Magnus Carlsen into first place.
Of course that also had a lot to do with a tough start for Magnus Carlsen.
In the run-up to the new tour, World Champion Magnus Carlsen spoke to Kaja Snare about his ambitions.
I feel like I played maybe one good event last season and apart from that, I feel like it was always a struggle. Partly because others were playing really, really well and giving me a huge fight, but I want to do better. I want to get started on a high note.
For one game the plan was on track. Vladislav Artemiev, the revelation of the latter stages of the previous Tour, looked to have solved his opening problems against Magnus, but he stumbled in a very tricky queen endgame. 35…Qg4 was a step in the wrong direction, while 36…Kh6? (36…Kg8! had to be tried) was suicidal.
37.Qf8+! Kh5 38.Qf3! and it turned out there was nothing to stop the d-pawn marching to victory. In the final position Artemiev could queen his a-pawn, but Qg5 checkmate would follow.
That meant Magnus could go into Round 2 in high spirits, but his opponent, 17-year-old World Rapid Champion Nodirbek Abdusattorov, also had reasons to be satisfied with his first round. In a tough position against Anish Giri he found the brilliant 25.Nc5!
All Black’s advantage had gone, and in fact after 25…Ng5?! Nodirbek could have gained a big advantage with 26.Nd7! (26…Qxd7? 27.Rxe5!), but instead the teenager played 26.Qxd4 and comfortably drew in 33 moves.
Magnus had famously lost to Nodirbek in the World Rapid Championship, and soon it looked as though lightning would strike twice. Magnus missed a relatively straightforward tactical way to gain a big advantage and instead stumbled into an unconvincing exchange sacrifice.
Soon Black was winning, but all it took was one inaccuracy for the advantage to disappear, until it was again Magnus who was pushing for more. Objectively he never had an advantage, however, and he suffered a shock on move 33.
It was another sign that things weren’t quite right with Magnus, though for now it was just a brief scare, since he was able to force a draw.
Abdusattorov would end Day 1 with four draws, but they were all fighting (no-one, in fact, made a quick draw all day!), he had an advantage in three of them, and they were against some of the toughest opponents around — as well as Magnus and Anish, he faced Vladislav Artemiev and, our next hero, Andrey Esipenko.
Andrey Esipenko is making a habit of torturing Magnus Carlsen
19-year-old Russian Esipenko was making his Tour debut and got off to a fast start when Shakhriyar Mamedyarov blitzed out 9…Nc6? and was suddenly losing a piece after 10.Nxc6 bxc6 11.e5!
Esipenko converted his advantage into a crushing attack, that saw Shakh resign in just 23 moves.
Esipenko then drew against Giri before facing Magnus in Round 3. He had the white pieces and essentially dominated from start to finish, with the World Champion’s attempt to whip up counterplay backfiring.
Andrey correctly went for 21.Qxe6+! and made the rest look very easy before Magnus resigned on move 44. The youngster gave a brief fist pump in celebration.
His countryman Sergey Karjakin joined in the celebrations.
Afterwards Esipenko would describe that game as “amazing”, even though he said it wasn’t quite the same thrill as when he’d first beaten Magnus in Wijk aan Zee in January 2021. It was an impressive day for Esipenko, who ended in sole 3rd place, a point behind Ian Nepomniachtchi.
The 2021 World Championship challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi had a first round to forget in a hurry, with Levon Aronian soon taking complete control both on the chessboard and on the clock.
He never gave Nepo a chance, and it made you think of what Magnus had told David Howell and Askild Bryn in a podcast on the eve of the tournament.
Levon had been struggling for a bit. I feel like something clicked for him halfway through the last season of the tour, where he just started treating players like they were idiots! Something clicked, he just started playing really fast and a bit more aggressively, and it seemed like he stopped caring. And then the points just kept coming in, and now in the Grand Prix as well he’s showing absolutely zero respect for his opponents, and these are very good players, but he’s just making them look absolutely foolish.
Magnus also talked about reaching 2900 and the league game that cost him all his Wijk gains
chess24 Premium members can watch the full podcast at new.chess24.com/collection — if you’re not Premium you can get a 50% discount by entering the voucher code THELATEKNIGHTSHOW at chess24.com/en/premium.
From there, however, the players’ fates would diverge. Levon beat Alexandra Kosteniuk but then escaped by the skin of his teeth against Vincent Keymer before crashing to defeat against Hans Niemann. Nepo, meanwhile, would bounce back with three wins, ensuring that he hadn’t contributed to the season-long bonus fund that grows by $250 for every draw. He joked:
In general the strategy was not to give even a penny to this fighting prize fund, so just to win and lose and no draws. But on a serious note, I guess just a very, very poor day for many players, despite the result. I have nothing to be proud of, actually… My tactics after the first game were not to play like an idiot anymore. This partially worked out!
In Round 2 Nepo got to play some World Championship prep…
…and eventually squeezed a win in a drawish endgame. Then he overcame Anish Giri with the sudden attack 35.Bh7+!
35…Kh8 loses to the pretty 36.Rxf7!, pinning the e7-rook in two directions, while after 35…Kf8 36.Rxe7 Rxe7 37.Bg6! the h5-pawn was falling. You could blame a lacklustre first day for the Dutch no. 1 on the amount of carbon dioxide in his room, but sometimes there are other priorities!
That left a Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi clash in the final round of the day, and once again, as in the World Championship match in Dubai, Magnus played the Catalan. Nepo admitted he mixed something up, but for once Magnus wasn’t able to navigate the complications.
Here 19.e5! leaves pieces en prise everywhere, but it all works out for White according to the computer. Other moves such as Peter Leko’s suggestion of 19.Nb1 leave White a small advantage, but instead after 19.Nxa4?! Qxa4 20.Qxa4 Bxa4 Magnus had only a difficult endgame to look forward to.
As against Abdusattorov in Round 2, he put up great resistance, and the stylish 33.e6! seemed to be almost job done.
The e-pawn cuts the g6-rook off from defence of the b6-pawn, and if 33…Rxe6 then White has 34.Bc8!, hitting both rooks.
After 33…Nxe6 34.axb6 Nepo kept some advantage, however, and ultimately Magnus was unable to set up a fortress.
Sergey Karjakin could do some recycling!
“Better it would happen during the World Championship match!” said Ian, when asked if it was nice to get a win against Magnus after Dubai.
Ian wasn’t holding back when asked about his chess form.
It’s awful! Seriously, I really hope it will be better. It’s surely nice to score so many points out of nowhere, but basically all the games I won I didn’t really have any seriously better position, maybe only in Game 4, but I guess it was a dead draw against Shakh and it was pretty much a draw against Anish.
While the likes of Carlsen and Giri struggled, there were some brilliant displays from the relative underdogs, with Hans Niemann, Eric Hansen and Vincent Keymer all ending the day in a tie for 4th place.
17-year-old Vincent finished with a crushing win over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov…
…but his day could have been even better. He also defeated Jan-Krzysztof Duda with the black pieces, but he lost a winning position against Ding Liren and only drew this position against Levon Aronian.
52.Rd4? Re3+ 53.Ka4 Kg5 and the win had slipped away, but 52.Rd6+! Kg5 53.Ne6+! would have won on the spot — there’s no way to stop the e-pawn queening.
Canada’s Eric Hansen got off to a perfect start against US 18-year-old Hans Niemann as he pounced on the blunder 51.Kf2?
51…b2! 52.Rxb2 (otherwise the pawn queens) 52…Nd1+! and Black had won the rook, with Eric making no mistake in the potentially tricky endgame that followed.
Eric would build on that with a spectacular win over 16-year-old Praggnanandhaa in the following round. 25.Nxf7! was a brilliant only move.
25…Rxf7 can’t be played because of 26.Rxc8!, with Pragg going for 25…h5 instead. Eric should have followed up with 26.Rxc8! anyway, since 26.Qh3 left the Indian youngster a chance to hit back.
26…Bxf2+! 27.Bxf2 Rxc3! and Black is even better, but instead after 26…Rxc3 27.Nxd8 Bxf2+ 28.Kh1! there was no stopping Eric going on to win an amazing game — if you have a chance, the tactics that followed are also well worth taking a look at in slow motion.
Hans Niemann, meanwhile, bounced back from the loss in Round 1 to gain the day’s only draw against Ding Liren and then put Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Levon Aronian to the sword in an incredibly convincing manner.
The battle to finish in the Top 8 places and qualify for the knockout is well and truly on, with the likes of Giri, Artemiev, Carlsen and Mamedyarov all among the players who would fail to make it if the Prelims ended now.
The day’s action has also shaken up the predictions, but we still have 11 rounds to go and ample time for the big guns to flex their muscles.
Let’s just hope for more of the same no-holds-barred action, since so far the battle to win the Fighting Chess awards has been fierce. GM David Smerdon explained how the system worked in a Twitter thread:
Day 2, Sunday 20th February, again starts at 11:45 ET | 17:45 CET | 22:15 IST. Watch the Airthings Masters right here on chess24.
See also:
We respect your privacy and data protection guidelines. Some components of our site require cookies or local storage that handles personal information.
Using chess24 requires the storage of some personal data, as set out below. You can find additional information in our Cookie Policy, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms of Website Use. Please note that your data settings can be changed at any time by clicking on the Data Settings link in the footer at the bottom of our website.
Comments 2
Be the first to comment!