Magnus Carlsen described himself as “very, very happy” as he picked up a first classical win of Norway Chess 2022 by defeating Teimour Radjabov in Round 3. Magnus moved up to 3rd place, while the only other player to score the full 3 points was Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who beat Arjan Tari and moved up to 4th. The leaders were unchanged, with Vishy Anand and Wesley So defeating Wang Hao and Anish Giri in Armageddon to keep up a record of winning all their mini-matches so far.
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And here’s the day’s live commentary from Jan Gustafsson and Jovanka Houska.
Magnus Carlsen and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave picked up the full 3 points for winning in classical chess in Round 3, while Wesley So, Vishy Anand and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov got 1.5 points for their wins in Armageddon.
World Champion Magnus Carlsen is under more pressure than any of the other players in Stavanger, with heightened media attention and, at times, local kids ambushing him on arrival!
He was thrilled with how Round 3 went, however, not so much for scoring his 10th career classical win against Teimour Radjabov, but at the way he’d done it.
I’m very, very happy. It’s very rare that you follow a plan from move 1 and it just works perfectly. So I took a pawn and defended it in a very, very ugly way, and that passed pawn won me the game, so I’m very happy with that.
There was an interesting background to the Catalan Opening we got in the game. In Game 2 of the 2021 World Championship match Magnus had gone for the risky pawn sacrifice 8.Ne5!? against Ian Nepomniachtchi, and although it worked, up to a point, the World Champion then blundered and had to scramble to survive.
Then in the recent Superbet Classic in Bucharest, Wesley So went for 8.a4, got a position a pawn up and gradually ground out a win against the same opponent, Ian Nepomniachtchi. That provoked a discussion during Episode 4 of the Chicken Chess Club, a podcast featuring three members of Magnus Carlsen’s World Championship team. Jan commented:
Should that make us feel stupid? Someone just plays the computer main line and is a pawn up and then wins a game easily, technically. Should we think, err, maybe that was an option?
In Round 3 in Stavanger Magnus went for Wesley’s line, but varied subtly with the new move 13.Bf4 instead of 13.Be3. Teimour was soon plunged into thought, and he guessed wrongly with 15…Nec5!?
The computer suggests 15…Nac5 instead, and even throws out the tricky 15…Nxf2!? 16.Rxf2 Bxg2 17.Nxe6 fxe6 18.Kxg2.
In the game Magnus was confronted with a move he was unprepared for, but realised that meant it was a move the computer didn’t approve of. He commented:
It was surprising, and when you’ve prepared a bit, surprises are generally welcome! It could have been that this move was in the file, but it wasn’t one of the main lines, for sure.
A long grind began, with Magnus explaining his opponent’s problems:
He had a lot of options. It’s always unpleasant when you have to calculate a bunch and the most you can hope for is a draw anyway. He decided just to make waiting moves after a long time, which to be fair he could have done immediately. Somebody like Nepomniachtchi would probably just make these moves immediately and then he would have had half an hour more at the end, but that’s not the way everybody plays.
Teimour resorted to trying some tricks.
Magnus noted this one himself:
But when your opponent puts the queen on b7 you sort of think he might have a plan, because Ra7 is a bit too obvious!
The computer flags up offering an exchange with 27…Nd5?! (27…Bc5!) as an inaccuracy, while after 29.Kg2 Magnus explained Teimour’s dilemma.
What I was happy about here, and also what he talked about after the game, is that his pieces are basically perfectly placed and virtually any move will worsen his position, and I guess the position is still kind of a draw, but with little time it’s really hard to sit and make waiting moves.
The time situation was soon such that it looked unlikely Teimour could physically reach move 40, but in any case 34…Nd7? was the point of no return in purely chess terms.
35.b5! was a decisive pawn advance, since 35…Qxb5 36.Nd4! leaves the queen unable to defend the knight on d7. After 35…Qd6 36.Qa6! Teimour was just in time to resign.
The other player to score a classical win was Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
This was a game where the players kept us up-to-date on the action as it went on by visiting the confessional booth. Aryan Tari played 3.Bb5+ against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave’s Sicilain and then with 8.Nh4!? played a novelty cooked up by his second Kirill Alekseenko.
Things went as Tari planned with 8…0-0 9.Bxc6 bxc6 10.Nf5, but from there on it would get messy. Maxime would later summarise:
I didn’t know what to expect today. I knew that 3.Bb5+ was an option. Things went at first bad, because I was caught in the opening, then very good, because it transpired that things went very well in the complications.
10…Ne8!? immediately got Aryan “out of book”, so that 14.g4!? was already an over-the-board inspiration.
It wasn’t so bad in itself, but things lurched downhill fast for Aryan with 14…Ne6 15.g5 Be7 16.fxe5?! dxe5 17.Nxe7+? Qxe7 18.Qg3 f6! and suddenly the tables had turned.
19.g6 or 19.h4 were the last chances to stem the bleeding, while after 19.gxf6? Rxf6 the white king was just too weak to survive. A puzzled Aryan would later lament:
I thought g4 was logical, but then it was kind of a strange game, because it was not like I got slightly worse, it was like from a complicated middlegame I got dead lost in 3 moves. Out of nowhere I was dead lost. It was very strange how it happened actually. I still don’t understand really.
Maxime, meanwhile, was able to give some credit to his French Grandmaster colleague Jules Moussard!
“Jules was heard!” Maxime would sum up after the game had ended in a 29-move victory.
Maxime moved up to 4th place, half a point behind Magnus, but wins in Armageddon meant it was still Vishy Anand and Wesley So who are out in front.
After such a long break from competitive chess you might have expected Wang Hao to be among the least prepared players in Stavanger, but so far he’s holding his own in the openings. He said of the classical draw against Vishy Anand in Round 3:
I think I prepared well and Vishy didn’t show anything. Probably he was surprised by the Sveshnikov, and I equalised easily.
“When I thought I finally got somewhere it stopped!” said Vishy of the way Wang Hao gave up a pawn to all but force a draw.
Players have played this exact ending before and won with White, but at the highest level the chances of success are tiny. Vishy explained:
We reached this drawn ending which I know from my game with Leko. If the king is cut on g2 there’s nothing to play for, so I didn’t waste time.
That meant a first Armageddon game for Vishy Anand since he last played Norway Chess in 2019, and he found it tough:
While the game was going on every time I’d make a move I would think, oh, I wish I’d done something else, and so on, so I guess this sudden switch from classical is tough, and this 20 minutes is not enough to switch, but ok, it’s the same for both of us.
Wang Hao certainly felt the same, complaining that his reaction times were very slow: “I think I’m very bad at [Armageddon] and I don’t know if I can get better!” Some mutual mistakes in the opening led to a dramatic struggle.
Wang Hao gave up his queen more out of necessity than choice, but briefly he could have made the draw he needed to win the Armageddon.
Wang Hao thought 14 seconds here and eventually played 29…b4? when after 30.Rd3! Vishy was on top and made no serious mistakes on the way to victory. Instead 29…h5! would have exploited the lack of squares for the white queen, since 30.Qe2 is impossible due to 30…Nc3, forking the queen and rook. 30.Qf3 runs into 30…Rf6, while 30.Qh4 is met by 30…Bf6 31.Qf4 Be5 and a likely draw by repetition.
That moment aside, however, Vishy was on top for the whole game and deservedly won a 3rd mini-match in a row, keeping the sole lead.
The first match of the day to finish was So-Giri, a clash between two of the most solid players at the top of world chess. The Chicken Chess Club was understandably keeping tabs on the encounter.
In a normal tournament you would predict a draw, and indeed the classical game did end in a quick and uneventful draw, but in Norway Chess every match much produce a winner. Wesley had Black in the Armageddon and predictably went for the Berlin, but later that may have lulled Anish into a false sense of security.
He admitted of 22…g5! by Wesley that he was “taken off-guard” and hadn’t seen it coming. The further advance of the g and f-pawns in fact gave Wesley a winning position, but in the end he was more than happy to take a draw by repetition and clinch victory.
The final match of the day to finish, meanwhile, was the opposite, with Mamedyarov and Topalov living up to their reputations for aggressive chess. The classical game had seen Shakhriyar on top until towards the end things got out of control with Veselin also getting chances in mutual time trouble.
The draw that followed was a fair result.
The Armageddon was the same, but on steroids, with Mamedyarov pressing for the win he needed with White until blundering a pawn and getting into real difficulty. Even low on time it seemed Veselin should at least be able to get the draw he needed, but he allowed himself to get tangled up.
Mamdyarov’s 53.Bxe4, exploiting the pin of the knight to win back the pawn, was the moment Shakh became a heavy favourite, and sure enough he went on to win. Veselin admitted, “my last 10 moves were all mistakes, so I kind of collapsed”, while Mamedyarov reflected, comparing his Armageddon with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave the day before:
How is it possible to lose this position like yesterday, but also how’s it possible to win a position like today!?
That means the standings look as follows before Round 4, the last before the first rest day.
Round 4 is set up perfectly, with So-Anand a chance for Wesley So to take the lead (but he can only do that if he wins in classical chess) or for Vishy to increase the gap. There's also the small matter of Carlsen-Giri — for many years Anish held the bragging rights in that match-up, but by now Magnus already has a 5:1 lead in classical wins.
Don’t miss the Norway Chess commentary from Jan Gustafsson and Jovanka Houska from 17:00 CEST each day!
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