Liem Quang Le said “this is amazing” as he won three games and drew one for a second day in a row to take a 4-point lead at the top of the Charity Cup table. Magnus Carlsen is also well on course to qualify for the knockout stages as he also won three games, though he lost again, this time to David Navara, with the Czech no. 1 the player who most improved his chances. Jan-Krzysztof Duda remains unbeaten and level with Magnus in second place, while 16-year-old Praggnanandhaa took down world no. 3 Ding Liren to squeeze into the Top 8.
David Navara knew he had a winning advantage against Magnus Carlsen
You can replay all the games from the Prelims of the Charity Cup, the 2nd event on the $1.6 million 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, using the selector below.
And here’s the day’s live commentary from Kaja Snare, Jovanka Houska and David Howell…
…and from Peter Leko and Daniel King.
The Charity Cup is raising money to support UNICEF helping children in and around Ukraine — donate here!
Vietnamese no. 1 Liem Quang Le continued his stunning run at the Charity Cup as he once again won three games and drew one on Day 2 of the event.
He commented:
This is amazing! I did not expect this. I think this is my best performance ever on the Tour.
He said he’d been busy training the team he runs at Webster University in Saint Louis, and credited his performance to how practically he’d played.
Today I really liked the way I played: just fast, and I didn’t make any big mistakes. So my games today have been pretty smooth. I won three games and drew one, and considering I had three Blacks I’m very satisfied with that.
Liem began the day by beating Gawain Jones with the black pieces in just 26 moves after sacrificing a piece on h3. He would do more of the same in the final round of the day against Vidit, whose qualification chances were hit hard by losing two games with the white pieces.
20…Nxh3+! 21.gxh3 Qg5+ 22.Kh1 Rxf2 23.Re2 Raf8 24.Rxf2 Rxf2 25.Qe1
Two black pieces are under attack, but Liem calmly played 25…e3! and after 26.Nxe6 Qg3! it was time for Vidit to give back some of his extra material to stop an immediate checkmate. 27.Qxf2 did that, but it couldn’t save the game.
The only other player unbeaten, and the only player to match Le’s 3.5/4 score on Day 2, was Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who moved into 2nd place with wins over Gawain Jones, Jorden van Foreest and Praggnanandhaa. It was a powerful display, though the first win against Pragg could very much have gone either way after some great resourcefulness from his opponent.
After 37.Rd1! Black has nothing better than to give up the queen, since 37…Qxc2? 38.Rd8+ is mate-in-5. Instead, down to under 20 seconds, Pragg blitzed out 37.Qc1 and was soon lost.
Pragg’s coach Ramesh joined the Oslo broadcast after that game and talked about what his student can still work on.
Not too much is wrong with the kid's play, however, since he ended the day by beating Eric Hansen and then world no. 3 Ding Liren in a fine positional game where he ground out a win from an endgame where it had at first seemed only Ding had any chances.
43…b4! was the last critical move, preparing a path for the black king to the a5-pawn. The black pawns are too powerful.
Magnus Carlsen, who lost to Pragg in the Airthings Masters but, as he pointed out, also won the tournament, talked about the Indian prodigy.
He plays very well and obviously there was a lot of attention for that game, which I guess is just good for chess, but he seemed to take it very, very calmly, which I thought was a good sign. Don’t get carried away even if people around you do. He’s doing well now and he’s certainly a massive candidate to qualify for the knockouts.
It would be wrong to suggest Duda was lucky with his 3.5/4 score, however, since the Polish no. 1 could easily have made it 4/4. He drew against David Anton, but kept missing the same tactic, including in the final position, when it still worked but wasn't quite as strong.
23…Bxa3! would have been a decisive blow!
The other player in second place is Magnus Carlsen, who, overall, had a good day at the office. He started by spotting a fine trick against the co-leader at the time, Hans Niemann — 20.Ndf5!
Black can’t take twice on f5 due to Qxd5+, picking up the rook on a8, and though Hans sought a tactical escape in 20…Bxf5 21.Nxf5 Nf3+! it was met by 22.Qxf3! and soon Magnus had the kind of endgame he could win in his sleep.
Magnus also beat an in-form Richard Rapport and ended the day in style with four queens on the board against Lei Tingjie.
It was a tough day for the Chinese women, with both Lei and Ju Wenjun losing all four games.
For Magnus, though, there was just one notable stumble, with the World Champion summing up:
Obviously two losses is a bit too much, but the points are coming in pretty steadily, so it’s fine.
His second loss of the tournament was against David Navara, the player who improved his chances the most. The Czech no. 1 correctly pointed to 19.Qa2? by Magnus as a mistake.
That allowed 19…exd4! 20.Bxd4 b6! 21.Nac4 Bf4! 22.g3 and White’s position was in ruins.
David said of his win:
Of course I was very surprised. I was hoping for a draw and I tried to play solidly. I played this line recently against Parham Maghsoodloo and Magnus somehow blundered, made a huge positional mistake by playing Qa2 in the game, allowing me to shatter his pawn structure, after which I had a bishop pair as well as a better pawn structure.
It was not completely clear, and I’m not sure if my structural and positional transformations were correct, but my position was more promising all the time since then and I’m generally good in positions where I have the initiative and which are not too strategically complicated. After the next transformation it resembled my game versus Vugar Gashimov from the Sochi Grand Prix 2008, where I had a similar pawn structure with the same material, but I misplayed it in time trouble and eventually even lost. I succumbed to a mating attack. And here I did not.
In fact David pointed out that he was the one who spotted a fine tactic at the end when he played 42…Rf8!, having seen a great resource against the critical 43.Rf1.
43…Qxf1+! is a crushing queen sacrifice, with 44.Nxf1 met by 44…Rg2+ 45.Kh1 Rxg3+ and Black is giving checkmate. 44.Qxf1 Rxf1+ 45.Nxf1 is also mated by 45…Rg2+.
In the game Magnus played 43.Qd4 instead and resigned a move later, with checkmate unstoppable. A great moment for David Navara, who seemed to make a statement of solidarity with Ukraine afterwards — unless he just felt the flowers deserved some limelight!
He commented:
Of course I was very happy because until then my tournament had been really bad. I had some good positions but failed to convert them, and I even lost one of them in the evening because my brain just stopped working, whereas Eric Hansen defended resourcefully and deservedly won the game, although he had a difficult position at some point.
David is now just off the qualifying spots, as is David Anton, who drew two games and beat Ju Wenjun and Vidit to leave himself in 9th place, level on points with Jorden van Foreest.
Another player who had a good day was Richard Rapport. If anyone else had played 1.e3 you might have assumed it was a mouse-slip, but Richard lives for offbeat openings.
The theme of the e3-square continued to the very end, when the unfortunate black knight ended up trapped there.
Eric Hansen admitted he was “playing terribly” and said there was “definitely a bit more internal pressure” on him after qualifying for the knockout in the first event.
Richard then won a truly amazing game against Ding Liren. The little move 14.a3?, ceding the b3-square to Black, seems to have been a critical strategic mistake, but all eyes were on the extraordinary setup we later got on the kingside!
Richard handled the madness better and won the game, with two losses for Ding on Day 2 seeing him drop to 5th place after the high of finishing Day 1 by beating Magnus.
Here’s the current balance of play as we crossed the halfway mark in the Prelims.
The odds of finishing in the Top 8 and qualifying for the knockout look as follows.
There are 7 rounds to go, with Praggnanandhaa-Carlsen the obvious game to watch in the first round of Day 3. Don’t miss all the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Charity Cup action live from 17:45 CET 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 1
Be the first to comment!