Richard Rapport is the first player through to the final of the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix after stunning Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and watching chess fans by going for the sharpest possible opening with the black pieces in a game he only needed to draw. It seemed an inspired choice as he got an endgame that looked an easy draw, but a few slips and Maxime came incredibly close to the win he needed. Andreikin-Giri also saw an offbeat opening, but the quiet draw that followed means the players return for tiebreaks on Friday.
MVL-Rapport was a wonderful fight, but in the end Richard got the draw he needed | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
You can replay all the games from the knockout stages of the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix using the selector below.
And here’s the day’s live commentary from Peter Svidler and Jan Gustafsson.
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Richard Rapport is through to the final of the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix, though we don’t yet know who’ll join him there.
Richard Rapport does things differently than most of his colleagues, even if he can’t always explain it. He went into the 2nd game of the semi-final match against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave needing only a draw, but commented:
I decided for some reason to go for this line which was kind of a line also for a must-win game, so it ended up resulting in a crazy position.
Instead of meeting 1.e4 with the solid Petroff Defence he’d deployed twice earlier in the event, Richard played the Ruy Lopez, and with 4…d6 was already indicating he wasn’t going for any main lines. By move 6 he was offering a piece.
You can’t take immediately — if you try to hold on to material then Qh4 will soon deliver mate — but after 7.d4 b5 8.Bb3 Nxd4 Maxime did grab the piece with 9.hxg4. The French no. 1 was also playing relatively fast, until after 9…hxg4 10.Ng5 Nh6 he stopped for 35 minutes to consider his options.
The opening had, understandably, caught him off-guard, with Maxime commenting:
I didn’t expect Richard actually to go for such a remote line where everything’s hanging. In a way, this was a practical choice, because I was out-prepared there, but it was also risky, because I know that if I play the best moves I will probably be better at the end, but it didn’t turn out to be the case. It just got to a very complicated middlegame and then a very complicated endgame.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave wanted a fight, but perhaps got more than he bargained for | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
This position had been reached in computer games, with our silicon friends picking 11.Bd5 but the games nevertheless ending in draws. Maxime chose 11.g3!? Be7 12.f4 Qd7 and then the move the computers flag as the first serious inaccuracy, 13.f5!?
Richard dug deep here, thinking for over half an hour, but did indeed go for 13…c6!, when after 14.Nc3 Qd8 (14…a5! may be even stronger) it was time for Maxime to give back the piece with 15.Nxf7.
When 15...Nxf7 16.Qxg4 Nxb3 17.axb3 Bg5 followed a draw suddenly looked all but inevitable, since the bishops and queens were set to be exchanged on, or from, the g5-square, but it soon became clear that wouldn’t be the end of the action. Move 23 was notable.
Black still had the option to castle either way, but with the rooks well-placed on a8 and h8 it seems 23…Ke7! was a better option to join them. Richard's 23…0-0-0!? suddenly gave White hope again, and Maxime began to find all the right moves.
Richard would later comment:
I think I should be fine at some point, but then I misplayed it terribly in the endgame. I’m not even sure if I should trade queens, but from there on things went downhill for me quite badly. And then I was completely losing, and I guess it’s time to go and try my luck in the lottery as well, because I should thank my lucky stars! I think the game should have ended long before, and I got these one-move chances and okay, I’m really sorry, but this is the way things went.
Richard Rapport's unconventional approach worked out in the end | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
Maxime had no complaints:
For sure I had some wins out there, but it was always a matter of calculation — so many lines to look at with this pawn race and all the stuff, so in the end it finished in a draw. For sure it could have gone my way, but it wasn’t to be the case today.
The final twist came on move 47.
The “simple” 47.Nxh6! is probably winning, though as Maxime said, the lines are very long to calculate, and very close. 47…c4! would likely have followed, but it did also in the game after 47.Rxg7!? c4! and, move-by-move, it turned out that Richard was just in time.
Here Richard played 63…Qc5+ 64.Kg2 Qc6+ and, as it was clear there was no good way of escaping the checks, a draw was soon agreed, putting Rapport in the final.
For Maxime it means that he needs a big result in the 3rd and final Grand Prix to have a decent chance of being one of the two players to reach the Candidates Tournament.
Of course I wanted to go further, but Richard played overall better than me in these two games, so I’ll take the lessons from what happened and hopefully come back even stronger in Berlin. Basically I need to win the event to qualify for the Candidates, so again looking forward to the challenge.
Richard, meanwhile, after reaching the semi-finals in Berlin, will be in with a decent chance of reaching the Candidates even if he loses the final, but if he wins he'll put huge pressure on his rivals.
First, however, he had other priorities after such a crazy game.
I guess tonight it’s time to get drunk after this game and take my rest, then we’ll see who I will play.
Andreikin followed Kramnik's play against Grischuk from the 2018 Candidates Tournament, perhaps forgetting Giri had been Vlad's second back then! | photo: Vladimir Barsky, Russian Chess Federation
For a 2nd day in a row we got 3.b3 in a game between Dmitry Andreikin and Anish Giri, but Dmitry’s opening surprise might have worked better if he’d studied the circumstances around the game he was following a little better.
I prepared 3.b3. It’s a rare move, not a novelty, of course, but for example Kramnik won a game against Grischuk in the Candidates Tournament in [2018]. Maybe I forgot the line, because after Nb1 Anish played Ne4, a very strong move, and the position is equal immediately.
The problem with the “surprise” was revealed by Anish.
I was Vladimir Kramnik’s second at the time, and he tortured me with this position, so I had a look at it a lot with him — it was a very interesting experience.
Vladimir Kramnik used the opening to get a playable position and beat Alexander Grischuk in Round 1 of the 2018 Candidates Tournament in Berlin. Dmitry wasn’t sure what was different in Belgrade.
In fact it was that instead of 10…d6 and then 11…Nbd7, Grischuk had played 10…Qc7 and 11…d6, so that when Kramnik played 12.Nb1 the knight was still on b8 and the queen on c7.
That detail turned out to be significant, since as Dmitry mentioned, after 12.Nb1 in Belgrade, Giri was able to trade off pieces with 12…Ne4!, a move that would have been much riskier in Berlin. Kramnik managed to organise Nc3, Rc2 and Qa1, so that he had a battery of bishop and queen on the a1-h8 diagonal, but in Belgrade 13.Bxg7 followed immediately.
Andreikin-Giri will be decided in tiebreaks | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
The remainder of the game was tense, with both sides having some hope of gaining an advantage, but it was always very close to equality. The main curiosity was perhaps that Dmitry later managed to repeat the Nd2-b1 manoeuvre.
This time he completed it with the intended Nc3, before another Na4-Nb2-Nxc4 pirouette. The game ended in a logical draw by repetition.
That means the players come back for tiebreaks on Friday, with two rapid games followed, if needed, by two blitz games and then Armageddon. The players competed to claim the other was the favourite. Dmitry:
Maybe Anish is a small favourite now, because he has too much practice last time in the Magnus Carlsen series. I think it’s important.
Anish countered:
I’m looking forward to the tiebreaks. I think Dmitry once went to the final of the World Cup after winning all the tiebreaks, and I would think I’m actually an underdog, but as Dmitry mentioned, I already played a lot of practice in the Magnus tour, and I think my rapid improved, so I think now I should be able to give a good fight and it’s going to be interesting.
Anish Giri: "I think my rapid improved" | photo: Mark Livshitz, FIDE
Don’t miss Jan Gustafsson and Peter Svidler live with all the Belgrade FIDE Grand Prix Knockout action from 09:00 ET | 15:00 CET | 19:30 IST.
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