Vladislav Artemiev was the first player to win a match against Magnus Carlsen in the 2023 Champions Chess Tour as he won in Armageddon to leave Magnus needing to plot a way to win the tournament via the Losers bracket. Hikaru Nakamura was an amazing escape away from also losing, but held on to defeat Vladimir Fedoseev and set up yet another double elimination showdown with Wesley So.
Just one of the matches in Division I of the Chessable Masters, the 2nd event on the $2 million Champions Chess Tour, was decided without the need for Armageddon.
Artemiev 3:2 Carlsen: “A really, really awful day of chess”
Why didn’t 25-year-old Vladislav Artemiev seem nervous as he took on World Champion Magnus Carlsen?
But it’s very easy! I just love chess, and every time when I play against a strong and famous opponent it’s a good day, and I’m really waiting for this.
The first game would set the tone for the match, with Magnus describing it as “just a barrage of blunders”. His decision to exchange queens looked questionable, but it was only when he decided to play for a win with his opponent down to seconds that things got completely out of control. 24.Bh3? walked into 24…Nxf3!
Despite fighting his way back into the game after 25.Kxf3 Ne4+ and taking the rook on d2, Magnus remained under pressure and ultimately sank to defeat with the white pieces. He blundered into a pin at the end, though the position was already objectively lost.
Magnus did Magnus things, however, and hit straight back, with Artemiev’s seemingly perfectly tenable position collapsing in the space of a few moves.
Would normal service now be resumed by the World Champion? No, he confessed, “he generally outplayed me in the 3rd game” as he lost a rook endgame where on a better day he might have seized some chances to escape. The stars of the Airthings Masters were both suffering.
The fourth game initially looked as though Vladislav would wrap up victory with a minimum of drama. Carlsen’s King’s Indian style setup only left him on the ropes, but towards the end, in a still very drawish endgame, Vladislav cracked.
If you want to take a pawn it should be the b4-pawn, since after 41.Bxh7? h2 42.Be4 Magnus had the winning 42…Bf5!, overloading the e4-bishop.
Magnus enjoyed it.
He then went on to “win” the Armageddon bidding war, but this was no soul read, as he bid three minutes less to get the black pieces than strictly necessary.
By comparison, Liem Le won his bid with 9 minutes 29 seconds, and Hikaru Nakamura with 9 minutes 38.
Magnus summed up:
I thought I’d be fine with the black pieces. I wasn’t particularly worried that he would outplay me, so I just thought, let’s just ensure that I’m Black. Right after I’d bid, I thought about it, and I thought he’s not the kind of guy who’ll bid very low as Black, so I should have tried to optimise and bid a little bit more. But too low? What is too low? Games have been won with those times in tournaments, so that’s fine, and as you saw, the time wasn’t the issue.
Despite some twists and turns, Magnus looked to have everything under control when he got in the move 32…f4!
After 33.gxf4 Bxh6! Black was even significantly better, though as Magnus explained:
I had this strike on f4, after which I should never lose. I was even up on time, but still he managed to find resources. I thought Nh4 and Rg4 were really strong, and then, yeah, I just hung the queen! After that I still had some minor hope when it came to the time situation, but obviously it was tough.
38…Nxd3? was the culprit, since the knight had to stay on c5, defending the queen, to prevent the killer blow 39.Rxg6+!
There was nothing better than to give up the queen with 39…Qxg6, and the only thing that kept tension in the position was that in an Armageddon game, with no increment, Vladislav had got down to his last seconds. Could he give checkmate in time?
That means for the first time in the Champions Chess Tour Magnus finds himself needing to fight his way back via the Losers bracket, with any loss now set to be fatal. How will he reset?
I don’t know. This was a really, really awful day of chess. I did everything to lose, and then some. Obviously it takes a strong opponent to exploit that, but that was pretty poor, so we’ll see. I’ll do my best tomorrow, but this was unacceptable.
Magnus will face a very tricky opponent in the Losers bracket, Liem Le, who lost to Fabiano Caruana in Armageddon.
Caruana 3:2 Le: Fabi gets there in the end
On paper this was the tightest of all four matches, but that was only because Fabiano Caruana squandered a huge advantage with the white pieces in both the 1st and the 3rd games. Liem Le’s 39…Rc3!? was one of the most visually surprising moves of the day.
The point is that 40.Qxc3?? runs into 40…Ne2+, but after picking up the black queen with 40.Rf7+ it should really just have been a matter of technique for Caruana. Instead he let his opponent escape with a fortress, but no harm was done, as he finally broke through with White in the Armageddon game to clinch victory.
That made it a 6th match win in a row on the Champions Chess Tour for Fabi, with the first five in Division II of the Airthings Masters.
Nakamura 2.5:2.5 Fedoseev (Hikaru wins in Armageddon)
“Not a good day of chess for me overall”, said Hikaru Nakamura in his recap, but it was a case of all’s well that ends well.
Vladimir Fedoseev was playing well from the start and missed a fleeting win in the first game before also applying pressure in the second. Game 3 was then a heavy blow to the US star’s chances, as he missed a win and blundered to defeat instead.
As so often, however, he hit back on demand, with 20…Nd4! in the final 15-minute game the moment at which it was clear he was going to force Armageddon.
Hikaru got the advantage of the black pieces, but that looked to have done him no good when he found himself two pawns down in the endgame. His memory did supply him with one glimmer of hope, however — the famous game Alireza Firouzja lost to Magnus Carlsen with three extra pawns in the 2019 World Blitz Championship.
This time the mistake by White was 76.b6+, allowing Hikaru a study-like escape.
Of course 76…Kxb6?? would allow White to queen the other pawn, but after 76…Kb8! there was suddenly no way for White to queen a pawn and win the game. The watching Fabiano Caruana was impressed:
To be honest, it was a miracle… When I saw this final position, b6, b7 and the e-pawn, it’s so unfair that White doesn’t win this. White is three pawns up, and if you take away the b6-pawn, White wins, but somehow this extra b6-pawn costs the win. It’s an amazing formation, actually. It shows how resourceful Hikaru is, to spot that this is a chance to save the game.
This was the final stalemate position on move 127.
That means we’ll get another Nakamura vs. So match, after they played three matches in the American Cup before Hikaru finally emerged victorious.
So 2.5:1.5 Aronian: Black is OK!
At first things didn’t look good for Wesley So, as his 10.e4!? was probably not “best by test”, and he ended up putting his king on e2.
The game was still in the realm of the survivable, but Wesley was down 9 minutes on the clock and couldn’t hold on. He described losing with the white pieces as “really a big blow for me”.
He hit straight back, however, by demonstrating his fighting spirit when pushed. He rejected a draw by repetition despite that meaning accepting a slightly worse position, until Levon Aronian was tempted on to the attack only to lose his way in complications. 33.Bxg5! was essential, while 33.Bg3? Nc2 34.Nf5 just wasn’t working, because of one move.
34…Qe2! and White was busted.
“It’s a very nice feeling to win with Black”, said Wesley, and he got to feel it again when he smoothly won Game 4 as well to wrap up victory without the need for Armageddon. That means it’s only Magnus Carlsen among the favourites who failed to win on the opening day, with Carlsen-Le and Fedoseev-Aronian in the Losers bracket.
Magnus is at risk of missing out on one of the top three places and an automatic place in Division I in the third event on the Tour, while an automatic spot is also the top prize in Division II. For the Chessable Masters, that not only features a powerful line-up of players, but commentary from Peter Leko and Peter Svidler.
There’s no space to summarise all the action, but it’s notable that Nodirbek Abdusattorov defeated Anish Giri, just as he did as a 16-year-old in the 2021 World Cup, while there were wins for stars such as Arjun Erigaisi (2.5:1.5 vs. Raunak Sadhwani), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2.5:0.5 vs. Aleksey Dreev), Praggnanandhaa (the only 3:0, vs. Le Tuan Minh) and Vladimir Kramnik (2.5:1.5 vs. Yu Yangyi).
The most spectacular victory, however, was for Vincent Keymer, who finally made it a 5th decisive game in five as he won a topsy-turvy match in Armageddon… but only when Georg Meier blundered mate-in-1 in a position where he could easily get the draw he required.
If there was any consolation, it was that Georg Meier wasn’t alone.
Here Maksim Chigaev played 44.Rf5?? and resigned after Grigoriy Oparin’s 44…Rh1+ made back-rank mate unstoppable.
Abdusattorov-Erigaisi and MVL-Praggnanandhaa are among the Division II match-ups to look forward to on Tuesday, while of course the Division I players will also all be in action.
Don’t miss all the Chessable Masters action here on chess24:
See also:
