Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, and Hikaru Nakamura, the five-time US champion and speed specialist, are the two big beasts of major online chess tournaments, and they demonstrated their subtle skills this week at the $235,000 Airthings Masters, the opening event of the year-long online Champions Tour. Their controlled and impressive approach in the matchplay rounds enabled them to see off challenges from the Indian teenagers Arjun Erigaisi and Dommaraju Gukesh.
In contrast, the world No 4 and anticipated future champion, Alireza Firouzja, qualified for the quarter-finals but then collapsed, losing five games in a row to exit the tournament. Firouzja has been absent from competition for several months for unknown reasons, and his tactical brilliance shone only fitfully in an error-strewn episode.
Unlike the three previous years of invitation events, the first meet of the 2023 Chess.com Tour was open to any grandmaster. Its entry of nearly 150 GMs was an impressive mix of three generations: former legends such as Vlad Kramnik, Vasyl Ivanchuk, Peter Svidler, and Gata Kamsky battled with current top 10s such as Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wesley So, and the new generation led by Firouzja and the Indian teens.
It was disappointing that the “Ginger GM”, Simon Williams, was the only English entry. Williams finished 95th with 3.5/9, a good performance against high calibre opposition, although insufficient to qualify among the top 54 who would contest the later stages with financial rewards of thousands of dollars.
David Howell is a commentator, and Airthings clashed with Bundesliga matches which involved Michael Adams, Gawain Jones and Luke McShane, but for England’s many other GMs this was a rare opportunity missed.
Airthings began with a nine-round Swiss of all players bar Carlsen and So, who were seeded as the top two in the 2022 Champions Tour. The top 12 in the Swiss then played matches to determine the final eight.
The Swiss phase was a runaway success for Gukesh, 16. He won the Swiss with an unbeaten 7.5/9, a point clear of the field and including a win against Kramnik, whom he went on to defeat 2-0 in their qualifying match. There were visions of a generation changing moment like Nigel Short’s 1977 win against Jonathan Penrose or Garry Kasparov’s 1982 defeat of Viktor Korchnoi, but, come the quarter-final, Gukesh could not match the wiles of Nakamura and lost 0.5-2.5.
Gukesh has come a long way from the incident five years ago when the then 11-year-old was two pawns down to Short at the Bangkok Open. Then, Short forgot about his clock, and after a few minutes his flag fell. He wrote: “Lose with dignity is a bit hard when your opponent is fully aware that you have not pressed your clock and jumps up and down with glee the moment your flag falls.”
Last year Gukesh won the top board gold at the Chennai Olympiad. He began badly at Wijk aan Zee last month, but fought back strongly in the closing rounds and said afterwards that he had learned much from the experience.
In his quarter-final, Carlsen was paired with Alexey Sarana, who won their individual game at the World Blitz in December. The first game provided a classic attack, Carlsen’s best at Airthings, where the highlight move sparking extravagant praise from the commentators was 17 g4!.
The No 1 had a harder grind in his semi-final, defeating Erigaisi only in the Armageddon tie-breaker. The 19-year-old improved greatly from his bottom placing at Wijk. The other semi-final was a typically cagey affair between Nakamura and So, which even featured the notorious Berlin endgame with an early draw by repetition from the queens on the d and e files.
In a normal tournament, Carlsen beating Nakamura in the Winners Final on Wednesday would be the end of it. But here, Thursday’s Loser Final resulted in a 2-1 Armageddon win for Nakamura against So, and Carlsen had to do it all over again on Friday.
He succeeded with a 2.5-1.5 scoreline, winning the first game and drawing the next three, but Nakamura had his chance in game three where he reached a won ending, only for Carlsen to establish a study-like draw where his lone rook held off the American’s rook and two pawns. Following that narrow escape, Carlsen was always in control in the fourth game and finally accepted a draw offer in a winning position.
The event’s complex and unusual format divided opinion and encouraged cautious play. Carlsen apologised for the lacklustre play on Wednesday, admitting that the games were of “low quality”. The columnist John Henderson headed his report “Every loser wins … new tour, new format, many new confusions!”
After four cagey draws in the final, Carlsen won the bidding for the favourable Black pieces in the Armageddon tie-break so needed only a draw to go through. Carlsen had bid eight minutes 58 seconds, Nakamura eight minutes 59. Despite having the full 15 minutes on his clock and thus a six-minute advantage,Nakamura never looked like making progress. Arguably, the one-second bidding success which gave Carlsen Black was a decisive factor in the result.
A comparison in other sport is the repechage system in Olympic rowing, where eliminated boats receive a second opportunity to qualify for the final. It works there because the repechage winners are rarely in contention for major medals. But if the outcome in this case is that Carlsen wins the Winners Final then loses the Grand Final, the Norwegian’s fans will not be best pleased. The Losers Final, Grand Final and Reset Final are controversial innovations, and could face a wall of criticism if they appear to lead to an unfair result.
Overall though, the revamped Tour is an impressive construction. On Monday 13 February there will be a new addition, a Swiss tournament open to all Fide and national title holders, not just grandmasters. It will be the proverbial eye in the needle, for only three qualifiers from the open event will join the GM stage. There, it is already being welcomed as an important addition to the chess economy, creating an opportunity for many more grandmasters than the favoured few with elite ratings to earn serious money for their efforts.
3854: 1 Rc3! wins. !f 1…Re1+ 2 Kf2! (threat 3 Qc6+ and Qn7 mate) Re6 3 Bxe6 Bxc3 4 Bd5+ wins. The tempting 1 Bb7+? only draws after 1…Ka7! 2 Bxa6! Qe5! 3 Qxe5 Bxe5 4 Bb5 Bg3! with bishops of opposite colours. The game source is not known.
