Magnus Carlsen kept up his current winning run last weekend by taking the $30,000 first prize in the Julius Baer Generation Cup, his third victory on the $2m Champions Tour, which ends at Toronto in December. The result follows swiftly on from the 32-year-old’s over-the-board success in last month’s knockout World Cup, the only major individual competition he had never won.
Carlsen’s final match was a clash of generations as the Norwegian took on Alireza Firouzja, 20, who as a child learned the moves only a year before Carlsen first became world champion.
They actually met twice, once in the winners’ pool when Carlsen won 3-0 and said: “We played three very complicated games, and I feel I handled them really well,” and then, after Firouzja had topped the losers’ pool, in the Grand Final, when Carlsen edged it 3-2 as Black in an Armageddon tie-breaker before saying:“ It was not my day at all. My brain was not working. Some days are good. Others, you have to get through them, and I’m really happy that I did.”
One of his best games was with 6 Rg1 against the Najdorf Sicilian 5…a6, a rare idea that tempted Firouzja to a switch into a Dragon setup with …g6, a formation that Carlsen proceeded to overrun by a sustained attack.
There were other interesting opening ideas. Firouzja twice chose the rare 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 e6 3 b3 against Carlsen, surprising him the first time but failing in the decisive Armageddon when Carlsen was better prepared.
Fabiano Caruana, the US champion and world No 2, lost to Carlsen in their semi-final and was later eliminated by the rising Uzbek talent Nodirbek Abdusattorov, but not before unleashing a strong plan against the now rare Nimzovich Sicilian 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nf6, which had periods in vogue in the last century.
Caruana’s key idea was 5 Ne4 in place of the normal 5 Nxd5, and as the game went it led to White castling long with a vicious attack on the black king, while Black’s own queen’s side pawn push proved too slow. An easy plan to follow, so worth remembering.
Hans Niemann’s settlement with Carlsen and chess.com has had a sequel this week. Back in action on the website, Niemann was paired with the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik.
In their first game, Niemann as Black chose to defend the Ruy Lopez 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 with 3...Nf6 4 0-0 Nxe4, the same Berlin Wall that Kramnik used to defeat Garry Kasparov in their world title match in London in 2000. The game reached a level ending until Kramnik made a losing blunder at move 46.
The return game, with Niemann White, Kramnik Black, began 1 e4 f6? 2 d4 g5?? the classical Fool’s Mate which has recently been named the Homer Simpson Defence. Niemann took half a minute to consider his response, then resigned rather than play 3 Qh5 mate. The episode, echoing Carlsen’s resignation on move two against Niemann, was recorded on Twitch.
Kramnik later posted a statement on his chess.com account to explain his action, while Niemann posted a one-minute statement on Twitter which concluded: “There will be a day when I will be the best chess player in the world. Until that time, my chess speaks for itself.”
Brave words, but the immediate reality is that the World Junior Championship starts in Mexico City in less than two weeks, with Niemann as the No 1 seed. It is by far his best opportunity in the near future to put his career back on track. To achieve that he needs not just to win the event, but to do so by a wide margin and ideally to approach the all-time record score of 11/11 set by William Lombardy, Bobby Fischer’s second, in 1957.
This ought to mean creating a bank of opening novelties, studying the games of likely rivals, and hiring a second to provide moral and technical support and to deal with practical problems. Instead, Niemann appears to be on a diet of blitz chess.
Garry Kasparov, the rival to Carlsen and Fischer as the all-time No 1, makes one of his rare appearances this weekend in Chess 9LX (also known as FischerRandom) at St Louis. His opponents are the cream of US chess, led by Hikaru Nakamura, Caruana, and Wesley So.
Play begins on Friday evening at 7.50pm BST, full details are on the St Louis website, while free and live coverage with running commentary is available on YouTube.
3884: Black won by 1…Qg1+! 2 Kxg1 f2+ 3 Kh1 fxe1=Q 4 Bxe1 Rxf1 mate.
