Magnus Carlsen said he couldn’t calculate and was just playing on intuition, but his play looked inspired as he defeated Anish Giri with a game to spare to move into 2nd place in the Oslo Esports Cup. Next up for Magnus is 16-year-old Praggnanandhaa, who leads by 3 points after reaching a perfect 9/9 by winning a rollercoaster final game against Liem Le. Jan-Krzysztof Duda beat Jorden van Foreest with a game to spare, while Mamedyarov-Hansen saw Eric hold on to win the fourth game and get off the mark after the players had previously traded blows.
Magnus Carlsen was clearly still under the weather, but it turns out his intuition is decent!
You can replay all the games from the Oslo Esports Cup using the selector below.
And here’s the day’s live commentary from Peter Leko and Tania Sachdev, with Tania joined by Judit Polgar, Sagar Shah and Lawrence Trent for the Pre-Show.
And from David Howell, Jovanka Houska, Kaja Snare and Simon Williams.
Round 3 of the Oslo Esports Cup was fast and furious, with all but one match over with a rapid game to spare.
Judit Polgar, the greatest female chess player of all time, said “they both want to tear apart the other one” when previewing the clash between World Champion Magnus Carlsen and his great Dutch rival Anish Giri.
But while the first game was a tense opening battle, it didn’t last long.
Here 13.Qxd7!? was worth considering, but Anish opted for 13.Bxe5 and after 13…Nxd2 14.Bxg7! Rg8 15.Rxd2 Rxg7 the game fizzled out into a draw in just 21 moves.
Magnus had White in the next game and, from the live video feed, looked to be struggling. As Peter Leko (and also Giri’s second Erwin l’Ami) noted, however, it didn’t seem to be doing too much harm to his chess.
Strategically speaking, the game began to revolve around whether Magnus could play e4 in the right circumstances. At times that meant when taking en passant was tactically impossible, but in the end Magnus welcomed taking en passant after 24.e4!
After 24…dxe3 25.Qxf6 gxf6 26.Rxe3 Magnus had a clearly better endgame. Anish later commented:
I didn’t get going today. The games were very poor on my side. I think I had a fine position in the second game and then started going downhill at some point. I made a few inaccuracies and then I got under pressure, and then I had chances at the end, but there was little time and it was not possible, unfortunately.
A position that had the potential to be a fortress was broken up on move 44.
44.d5!? cxd5 45.Kd4 posed tough new problems for Giri, and ultimately his pushing of his d-pawn was refuted by the striking 54.Rc3!
It seems that was game over, since after 54…Rxc3 55.a8=Q d2 the black king was too open to attacks from the white queen, and Magnus was able to capture the d-pawn and wrap up with ease.
We noted that a day earlier Magnus had been punished for seeming not to calculate and just rely on intuition against Liem Le. After the win over Giri he explained that was indeed his approach, since he was feeling too unwell to calculate, but, it has to be said, in such an endgame position it worked perfectly.
That meant Magnus was leading in the match and had no need to go for the jugular with the black pieces, but once again, as against Le, he played the hugely risky Benoni Defence. It was a gamble, but this time it paid off, with Anish admitting that Magnus got “a dream Benoni”. In the end the World Champion might have executed the winning idea sooner, but move 45 wasn’t too late.
45…c4! was decisive. 46.bxc4 b3! and the pawn can’t be stoped. Anish tried to counterattack on the kingside with 46.Nh6+ and pushing his pawns, but they were soon blockaded, and resignation came on move 53.
“I’m just happy to survive this day as well!” said Magnus.
He also said he’s hoping to feel a little bit better day by day, which is something he may need in Round 4, since he’s facing the runaway leader, 16-year-old Praggnanandhaa!
Praggnanandhaa is in Oslo with his coach Ramesh, who commented:
I’ve been with Pragg for almost eight years now, so we’ve seen many ups and downs in our times together. It’s really nice to see Pragg is doing extremely well at such a big platform, and this will give him a world of confidence.
Ramesh noted that in the first game of the day they’d been able to take advantage of Liem Le’s relatively narrow opening repertoire to get a close to winning position out of the opening. Things kept going well until 26…b3?! was a slip, allowing 27.e4!
After 27…Bxe4 28.Qxb3 Bh1! there was suddenly nothing better for Praggnanandhaa than to take a draw by repetition.
He shrugged that minor setback off, however, and his coach was impressed by Pragg’s decision to go for 21.Nfg5!? Be7 22.h4!? in the second game, despite being low on time.
He called the moves:
Very risky ideas with just hardly a minute left on the clock, so that just shows that he believes in himself. That’s really a good sign!
22…Nxh4 can be met by 23.Nc5!, hitting b7 and therefore gaining time for Bxh7+. In the game after 22…Bc8 23.Ng3 the complications only grew, but as against Mamedyarov, Pragg showed that he’s more than able to live with the best tacticians.
He eventually emerged with an extra pawn and, though trading queens didn’t seem the simplest way to win, he went on to grind out a 93-move win.
The 3rd, and what turned out to be final, game of the match was also largely dictated by Pragg, but near the end he went astray when he went for 45…Nd1?!, with the clear intention of pushing his c-pawn. Le reacted well and was winning, until he slowed down.
It was essential for Liem to push his own pawn with 49.a5!, or choose other aggressive options such as 49.Rf3 or 49.g5, but instead he went for 49.Re1!? c3! 50.Re7!? c2! and after 51.Rc7? suddenly Black was winning again. The final move of the game had to have been seen in advance by Pragg.
54…Qxc2? 55.Qxe3 and Liem would have been right back in the game, but Pragg unleashed the killer 54…Nexg4+! and Liem had nothing better than to resign the game and match.
Praggnanandhaa’s perfect run continued — he’s wrapped up all three matches so far 2.5:0.5, with a game to spare. The Indian youngster looks absolutely at home, and commented:
When you win of course you have a lot of fun! In general I’m having a lot of fun, playing these players. It’s always a very good experience, a fun experience as well. Rapid is always fun.
Praggnanandhaa noted he has to do some preparation, since he’s facing Magnus Carlsen in Round 4. A draw in rapid chess, regardless of the outcome of the playoff, would be enough for Pragg to keep the sole lead, so he knows Magnus will be out to catch him in the first four games.
Polish no. 1 Jan-Krzysztof Duda looks to be building up speed after his tough start against Magnus in Round 1. His second match win in a row was extremely convincing, starting by beating Jorden van Foreest with the black pieces in a powerful first game of the day. The second was a hard-fought draw, while the third was essentially over before it began.
13.dxe5??, instead of e.g. 13.h3! first, looks to have been a terrible mix-up by Jorden, and after 13…Ng4! he could already have resigned.
There was no defending f2, with Jorden’s 14.Re2, played after five painful minutes, running into 14…Nf4. That the game lasted until move 35 was more about the psychological pain of admitting defeat than chess.
Duda summed up:
I was just lucky, of course, in this third game. He just blundered terribly. That was extremely lucky, because basically it was the only move in the position that could lose so fast. Sometimes we’re just lucky in games.
That meant that only one match went as far as the fourth rapid game.
Eric Hansen noted that he likes to play against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, since the Azeri star never backs down from playing aggressive chess. It was no surprise that the first game of this match quickly got wild.
37.b6! Rxc3 38.b7 Bxb7 39.Qxb7 e3 40.fxe3 was a dramatic sequence, but 40…fxe3 gave Shakh a one-move chance to win the game on the spot. 41.Qb4! was the move, as Peter and Tania pointed out afterwards.
The dual threats to the rook on c3, and to play Bc4 and win the black queen, can’t both be parried. After 41.Rxe3?! Rc1 42.Qb2?! Qc8! Eric was on top, however, and he didn’t put a foot wrong for the remainder of the game.
Game 2 looked as though it would be an easy draw for Eric with the white pieces, but, in what he called “a very stupid game”, he lost the thread and got into an extremely tough queen endgame. It was nevertheless a tablebase draw at the very end.
62.Kf1 and 62.Kf3 are both “mathematical” draws with best play, but after 62.Kd1? it was over on the spot due to 62…Qd6+!
That forces off the queens, when it’s an easy win for the black pawns and king.
It was perhaps critical that Eric held in the 3rd game, while in the 4th he admitted to having some psychological difficulty knowing what to go for.
When I started the game I was like, I haven’t won any matches, even a tiebreak is better than a loss, so it was in my head — am I trying to play for a win, or am I trying just to build confidence, to go to tiebreaks?
Tiebreaks would have guaranteed at least one match point, but luckily for Eric he decided to play for more with the white pieces, and by around move 20 he was already close to winning. The conversion that followed was nerve-wracking to watch, and it was only on move 47 that Eric felt he could breathe a sigh of relief.
Here he went for 47.Rxf6!, spotting that after 47…Kxf6 and e.g. 48.Qc2 the black rook is unable to escape, since White is always threatening to win it with a dual attack on the rook and the exposed black king. 47…Rxb3 48.Rf5, just giving up a piece, was of course an admission of defeat. Eric commented:
I was like in a state of trance, but then you get the winning position, and then you get a little too excited and start making some small inaccuracies, start second-guessing yourself, and that’s pretty much what happened. But I was really happy right before the end to find that Rxf6 move, because I was down to 10 seconds and I have a bad habit — it’s already happened a few times this tournament, I lost a few games because I unnecessarily got low on time — so there I needed to find a move that would simplify things, because it was trending towards a position that I was going to lose… The blunder was coming, I could feel it! If I had played another 20 moves I probably would have blundered, so I was looking for a way to simplify things, and fortunately Shakh probably felt that, he was trying maybe to trick me, and that allowed me to find this Rxf6.
Eric made no mistake and ensured he’d picked up 3 points and $7,500 in prize money, already more than the $5,000 that all the players are guaranteed to receive for playing in a Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Major.
The standings look as follows.
Needless to say, Carlsen-Praggnanandhaa is going to be the most anticipated match of Round 4, with Magnus having a chance to catch the leader. The odds of tournament victory depend heavily on that clash.
We also have the all-Dutch match-up Giri-Van Foreest, Hansen-Le and Duda-Mamedyarov, with 3rd placed Jan-Krzysztof perhaps eyeing getting right into the fight for 1st place if he can win a 3rd match in a row.
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