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In the duel of underdogs between Jose Martinez and Denis Lazavik, Martinez got off to the worst possible start, as a one-move blunder prevented him from converting a clear advantage into a win.
White has a rook and two minor pieces for Black’s queen, with a clearly superior position. However, after 47.dxe4 (instead of, for example, 47.Re3), the balance was restored due to 47...Qb5, with a double attack — Martinez saved his rook with 48.Re3, but after 48...Qxa5 Black has enough play with his queen to save the draw.
Following this disappointing start, Martinez lost the next two games, which means Lazavik advanced to the final match in the winners’ bracket.
Much like Martinez, the loser in the other semifinal of the winners’ bracket missed a chance to obtain what would have been a crucial victory in game 2. Magnus Carlsen had won the first encounter, and Vladimir Fedoseev missed a difficult-to-find manoeuvre to bounce right back.
Despite being two pawns down, it seems like Black’s active king and knight will manage to save the day. And indeed, after 66.Kxg3, as played by Fedoseev in the game, White eventually got the half point.
However, Fedoseev missed the one winning move in the diagrammed position: 66.Ne3+. The Slovenian representative failed to notice that after 66...Kxd4 he has 67.Nc2+ (diagram), and there is no stopping the a-pawn!
Both 67...Nxc2 and 67...Kc5 lose to 68.a6 in this setup.
After this miss and a draw in game 3, Fedoseev got to even the score in the fourth encounter. However, it was Carlsen who prevailed in the Armageddon, where he held a draw with black in a topsy-turvy confrontation.
In over 4 hours in front of the camera, Karsten Müller presents to you sensations from the world of endgames - partly reaching far beyond standard techniques and rules of thumb - and rounds off with some cases of with own examples.
Meanwhile, four elite grandmasters faced each other in the losers’ bracket. Alireza Firouzja knocked out Wesley So by drawing with white and winning with black (two-game matches are played in the losers’ bracket), while Ian Nepomniachtchi first bounced back and then won the Armageddon against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
In the sudden-death decider, MVL was better in the endgame, but a mistake on move 48 turned the tables in Nepo’s favour, as analysed below by GM Karsten Müller.
The semi-finalists in the winners’ bracket of Division II are Vincent Keymer, Benjamin Bok, Vladislav Artemiev and Levon Aronian. In the one match of the quarter-finals that went to Armageddon, Artemiev beat Hikaru Nakamura with black to knock him down to the losers’ bracket, where he is set to face Rauf Mamedov on Sunday.
Keymer beat Jeffery Xiong 3-1, and got to win the second game in only 21 moves. Xiong’s innocuous-looking 20.e3 was the losing mistake.
The refutation is 20...Qg4, attacking the bishop and making the most of White’s weakened light squares around the king. After 21.Bd3, Keymer played 21...e4 and Xiong resigned.
22.exd4 exd3+ 23.Kd2 Rxd4 is devastating for White.
Key Concepts of Chess - Pawn Structures Vol.1 and 2
In this two-part course the emphasis will be on typical pawn-structures.
Out of the four semi-finalists in the winners’ bracket of Division III, Alexander Grischuk had the easiest victory on Saturday. The 40-year-old got a 3-0 victory over Jaime Santos, who did not show up for the match as he was representing FC Bayern Munich in the German Bundesliga — Santos won his game with white against Matthias Bluebaum.
Santos, nonetheless, remains in contention in the losers’ bracket.
In this video course, twenty-nine examples with multiple questions are presented in the interactive format, which is ideal for a range of playing strengths. Step by step you will be taken through the complex positions.
