€29.90
Giri wins three in a row
Anish Giri has so far played in all the events of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. The 26-year-old star did not make it into the knockout stage at the Airthings Masters and was knocked out in quarterfinals both at the Skilling Open and the Opera Euro Rapid Tournament. Now, at the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, he left a strong impression on day 1 of the preliminaries, as he beat Alan Pichot, Carlsen and Wesley So in rounds 3-5 to go into the second day of action as the sole leader on 4/5 points.
Carlsen and Levon Aronian also scored three wins on Saturday, although they also lost one of their five games to finish the day on 3½/5 they are currently sharing second place half a point behind the leader.
€29.90
A chance to face the very best
The fourth stage of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour will be played on March 13-21, with Magnus Carlsen heading a 16-player field which will include tour leaders Teimour Radjabov and Wesley So. The organizers have decided to once again use the name ‘Magnus Carlsen Invitational’, the same name used in the first online event of the 2020 online tour organized due to the pandemic.
Before Tuesday’s qualifier, fourteen players had already been confirmed to participate, with Anish Giri and David Anton getting spots based on popular vote. The remaining two spots, however, were to be decided in a 4-player double round robin qualifier. Johan-Sebastian Christiansen was supposed to participate, but a last-minute incident prevented him from playing (the following is the first tweet of a six-part thread):
The 4-player qualifier saw the participants face each other twice
at a 10+5 time control, with the top two making it into the Magnus Carlsen
Invitational. You can click any result in the table below to open that game
with computer analysis:
And here’s the live commentary from Jan Gustafsson and
Laurent Fressinet.
Let’s take a quick look at how the top two made it to the
Magnus Carlsen Invitational, starting with the winner, Alan Pichot.
As you can see, the young Argentinian managed to repeat
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave’s feat in the Candidates of coming in as a late