Follow Chessable Masters 2023 live games here and the video here the live starts Monday, April 3rd (8 am PT, 5pm CET)

This week: Nepo – Ding 2023 games 1 LIVE , part of the World Chess Championship 2023

Fabiano Caruana – Le Quang Liem
Hikaru Nakamura – Vladimir Fedoseev
Magnus Carlsen – Vladislav Artemiev
Wesley So – Levon Aronian

Follow Chessable Masters 2023 live games here and the video here the live starts Monday, April 3rd (8 am PT, 5pm CET)

This week: Nepo – Ding 2023 games 1 LIVE , part of the World Chess Championship 2023

Predicting the first and last finished games of the ninth round wasn’t too difficult. In their tournament game, the supposed showdown, co-leaders Levon Aronian and Gukesh were not looking for a fight to the death. In a well-known variation of the Ragozin, both opponents headed straight for a repetition that many grandmasters have used to quickly split the point.

The two had thus postponed the decision about the tournament victory and who would win the first prize of 40,000 euros and the trophy to the tiebreak – and risked Ian Nepomniachtchi disputing this prize. But before Nepomniachtchi got the chance to do so, he had to win against Vincent Keymer. The World Championship finalist needed a full point to catch up with Gukesh and Aronian.

While all the other games of the day gradually petered out, Vincent Keymer once again had to put in a six-hour shift. Opposite of him, Nepo didn’t let up, looking for opportunities to sharpen things up even with reduced material. For five hours Keymer kept the position balanced, then he rashly let his passed pawn run, and it was over: On the other wing, Nepomniachtchi’s play against the white king would prove decisive, while Kemer’s passed pawn didn’t reach the eighth rank. Nepomniachtchi had managed to intercept Aronian and Gukesh on the home stretch.

Three players tied at the top of the table – a rarity, but it happens. Levon Aronian has experience of this: in 2018 at the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis he, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana ended up at the top with equal points. A drawing of lots was scheduled there – and the players negotiated it away at short notice. They preferred to share first place. Such negotiations were not planned in Düsseldorf, and they did not arise. The rules in the event of a tie at the top of the table were clear.

Nepomniachtchi, after his hard-fought victory over Keymer, nevertheless first had to ask main referee Gregor Johann how things would proceed. “A round robin, double round robin, 10+2,” he got in reply. After an 82-move and more than 6-hour tournament game, he was now to face a potentially more than five-hour playoff against two rested opponents.

After winning the first tiebreak game against Gukesh, Aronian added another win in the second against Nepo. Nepomniachtchi seemed to have created nice attacking chances, but had made structural concessions. And these weighed heavier.

After that Nepomniachtchi had to play again, this time against Gukesh, and it was already a decisive game. Only the winner would still have a chance to challenge Levon Aronian for the tiebreaker. It went back and forth, both had chances, and at the end of an open game the Indian prevailed. That gave him a must-win game against Aronian: now one more win and the youngest competitor would be back on the heels of the oldest.

It started well for Gukesh, who first smashed up Aronian’s structure, then took aim at some pawn weaknesses and seemed to be on the winning track with two extra pawns. But Aronian didn’t let up, continuously creating problems, and Gukesh failed to turn his big advantage into a decisive one. In the end, the game turned completely around.

After these three full points in a row, Aronian could no longer be denied the tournament victory. The last two games of the tiebreak were not played.

The time control will be 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting from move 61

Round 9 live video coverage:

Keymer, back in the 2700-Elo club, expressed his relief after the game. “Super happy” he was with this victory over one of the very best in world chess. “Wesley So in top form is on a par with Magnus Carlsen, a hugely strong player,” explained Keymer, who has now climbed from “minus 2” to 50 percent. However, if someone were to offer him to play a second round of nine now, given his good results recently, Keymer would hesitate: “Don’t underestimate the energy that such strong competition takes.”

The WR Chess Masters makes very different demands than a “normal” tournament with “normal” opponents, he said. “There is no relaxed moment here.” If the opponents are not world class, “then you just make normal moves, which may not always be precise, and you don’t get punished. It’s very different here.” Speaking to Yasser Seirawan, Keymer recalled his black game against Jan-Krzysztof Duda: “I allowed myself one inaccuracy, and then as punishment I had to sit and defend for 6.5 hours.”

Levon Aronian demonstrated in the eighth round against Andrey Esipenko not his best chess, but his chess psychological extra class. In a game in which he thought he had no chance after an opening mistake, Aronian sent a perfectly timed draw offer across the board – just at the moment when he had built up a little counterplay and Esipenko was threatening to run out of time. Now the 20-year-old had to deal with not only Aronian’s activity during his ticking-down seconds, but also the question: “To accept or not?” Esipenko accepted, and Aronian was happy to have escaped.

Nodirbek Abdusattorov also escaped after an opening mistake, in a classical Sicilian, with which he wanted to surprise Anish Giri. But the latter was prepared. “I can’t explain it exactly, but somehow I guessed what Nodirbek would play,” the world number five said after the game. What happened to Giri was what he believes happens to him too often: After catching his opponent thanks to superior opening preparation, he let him slip into a draw. “That was unfortunate, of course,” Giri said.

Gukesh had his eyes on two boards during his battle with Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Tied with Levon Aronian at the top of the table, “of course I followed how he was doing.” But even when Aronian was supposedly on the losing side, “it didn’t affect my game”. Now Gukesh is looking forward to the showdown in the ninth round. “Levon is a great player, for sure it will be an interesting match. I’m excited about it.”

Praggnanandhaa experienced a déjà vu with the black pieces – almost. Just two weeks ago in Wijk aan Zee he had beaten the World Championship finalist Ding Liren with black in an Italian game. Now he was facing Ian Nepomniachtchi, the other World Championship finalist, in Düsseldorf, and once again the Italian was on the board. However, the game went the other way. Nepomniachtchi, encouraged by his win the day before, put on the pressure to catch up with the two leaders if possible. Pragg, however, defended with precision and came away with a perpetual check and half a point.

The time control will be 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting from move 61

Round 8 live video coverage:

Aronian lost to Ian Nepomniachtchi, who managed to break his run of drawn games. With four points from seven, the upcoming World Championship finalist is hot on the heels of the two leaders and in a good position to win the tournament himself.

Levon Aronian’s queen had lost its way a bit on the wing named after it with no discernible task and no quick way back, one reason why Nepomniachtchi was satisfied with his position early on. Alone: he had used up a lot of time. On the other hand, the exposed position of the opponent’s queen gave him the opportunity to chase it back and forth, thus repeating moves without changing the position.

After the first back and forth, Aronian suddenly called arbiter Gregor Johann to the board and claimed a draw because of a threefold repetition. But Aronian had miscounted. Johann ordered the game to continue.

“When Levon even went for the arbiter to get a draw, I saw how big his desire for a draw was,” Nepomniachtchi explained after the game. And he named another argument to continue the game: “I don’t have so many classical games before the World Championship match. I should use them.”

And how he used this one. With the white queen locked out on the other wing, Nepomniachtchi launched an attack against the under-defended white king. Gradually, he managed to bring more and more forces into position against Aronian’s monarch. After Aronian missed one or two opportunities to raise counterplay, the black initiative became irresistible.

The second Black victory not only of the round, but of the tournament, came to Gukesh, although it didn’t look like it at first. In a Catalan gambit, the Indian was on his own early – unlike his opponent.

“He’s prepared, it’s probably quite dangerous for me,” Gukesh reflected during the opening. “But I’m proud of what I then found on the board”: a knight move that was actually offside, looked terrible at first glance, but was tactically and strategically justified in these specific circumstances.

Nevertheless, it looked as if Esipenko was gradually organizing a promising king attack. But Gukesh coolly fended off what came, and he was still playing on the other side of the board with the extra pawn Esipenko had sacrificed at the start of the game. The white attack petered out, and the black counterattack soon took hold.

Wesley So and Praggnanandhaa provided the marathon of the day. For over seven hours So pressed for the full point with the black pieces. The Indian defended flawlessly in the rook ending until after 82 moves there was only one rook each left on the board.

The most spectacular game of the day seemed to be played by Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Already on move seven the black king had to flee to g6 into the open field, but one move later a black knight on h1 snatched a white rook. But what looked wild and hardly transparent was known to both players. Both had embarked on a rare line of the Steinitz Attack in the Russian Defense, and both knew exactly what they were doing. The spectacle soon petered out into a roughly even endgame.

Vincent Keymer and Anish Giri also had such an endgame on the board very early on. Keymer claimed possession of a pawn, Giri greater activity and the better structure. The result was an even game.