World Champion Magnus Carlsen destroyed Gukesh 23:7 to set up a Speed Chess Championship quarterfinal against Fabiano Caruana, only to complain afterwards, “I felt like I was playing horribly from the start”. The event continues with Anish Giri taking on Nihal Sarin today at 11:00 ET/17:00 CET/21:30 IST.
Magnus Carlsen won the first two editions of Chess.com’s Speed Chess Championship, in 2016 and 2017, defeating Hikaru Nakamura in the final on both occasions. Since then Hikaru has won it four times, including in 2020, when Magnus last played but lost to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the semi-finals.
The event features head-to-head blitz matches, with 90 minutes of 5+1 games, then 60 minutes of 3+1, and finally 30 minutes of 1+1. Only a few short breaks are included in the schedule.
There are 16 players in the final knockout, with $4,000 at stake in each Last 16 match. The winner gets $2,000 with the remaining $2,000 split according to the score. It’s then $6,000 for the quarterfinals, $12,000 for the semis and $20,000 for the final.
As you can see, we’re near to the end of the Last 16. Up until the Carlsen-Gukesh match we’d had three close clashes — Caruana defeated Arjun Erigaisi 14.5:12.5, Ding Liren beat Grischuk 14:12 and Aronian scraped past Andreikin in tiebreaks 15:14. The one crushing win, perhaps surprisingly, was for Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi 19.5:11.5.
On Tuesday Magnus Carlsen was taking on 16-year-old Gukesh, a fantastic young talent but not a player considered a blitz specialist. He’d just finished last in the Tata Steel Chess India Blitz and Magnus confessed afterwards that he had no doubts about the outcome of the match.
He’s a very strong player, but he has no experience playing blitz, especially online, and then you obviously have no chance whatsoever… Going into the match today I knew I was going to win, but the key was trying to play a good match, and I felt like I didn’t do that at all, and that was quite disappointing.
Jan Gustafsson and Laurent Fressinet commentated on the match.
In the first game Magnus allowed himself a little joke.
He later told Danny Rensch:
It wasn’t a mouse-slip… The last time I played the Speed Chess Championship I played against Parham Maghsoodloo in the first round, and then the very first game I mouse-slipped a4, and I so I thought it would be fun to “mouse-slip” it again.
Magnus played that a4 back then on the same move, move 5, in an almost identical position, and though he went on to draw that game he scored an absolutely crushing 24:5 win.
This time Magnus won the first game, but when Gukesh hit back in the second it seemed, briefly, that we might get a normal match. Instead Magnus won the next 7 games to finish the 5-minute segment with an 8:1 lead.
There was wasn’t much for Gukesh fans to cheer, but at least he avoided the fate of Maghsoodloo, who was “adopted”, i.e. beaten 10 games in a row. Gukesh struck in the 2nd 3+1 game, when he was dangerously close to that mark.
The toughest blow of the night came in the 9th 3+1 game, when Gukesh in fact had a winning position, only to blunder into mate-in-1.
Gukesh won the next game, however, and then in the 1+1 section he got some more revenge when it was Magnus who blundered mate-in-1 (33…Re8! would have stopped Ne7# and left Black winning).
That came in a run of three wins in a row for Gukesh, though one of them was because Magnus disconnected. The World Champion wasn’t anywhere near as happy as you might have expected after the match.
I didn’t enjoy today’s match one bit! I felt like I was playing horribly from the start, I just didn’t have it at all. Normally I think I’d enjoy the match, but today was just really bad. Also, I was having some computer issues as well. I had no idea what happened. This is a connection that’s been very stable for years, so I’ve no idea what’s going on there.
He nevertheless won the last two games to make it 23:7, 8:1 in 5+1, 8:2 in 3+1 and 7:4 in 1+1. Magnus was asked how he does so well despite, according to himself, not being in form:
It's a combination of experience and innate ability — that’s still there even when I suck!
Magnus now takes on Fabiano Caruana in the quarterfinals, and commented of Fabi’s win over Arjun Ergaisi:
I thought in the first match he started really poorly against Arjun, and then he started to play a bit better after a while, so he probably got warmed up. I think in general the trend has been positive for him the last few years at speed chess, so I have to show up!
First, however, we have the remaining Last 16 matches. On Wednesday, December 7th, Anish Giri takes on Nihal Sarin to decide who plays Ding Liren.
Then on Thursday, December 8th, it’s a double-header. First Wesley So takes on Nodirbek Abdusattorov to decide who plays MVL, and then Hikaru Nakamura plays David Paravyan to decide the quarterfinal opponent for Levon Aronian.
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