World No.1 Magnus Carlsen was reviewing his drawn game against D Gukesh when he was asked to look at the Arjun Erigaisi-R Praggnanandhaa queen endgame and he instantly said that it was over.
“This is just inertia from Arjun,” he said during an interview on chess24.com after winning his quarterfinal at the FIDE World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan on Wednesday.
It indeed was. The game had been over for a while with the computers giving Pragg the win but given that Erigaisi had got a win in the first game, he struggled for as long as possible. There was a semi-final at stake (and a spot in the Candidates potentially) and he didn’t want to leave anything in the tank.
“I am very happy to force the tiebreak today,” said Praggnanandhaa, who was playing with black pieces, in an interview after the game. “I didn’t expect it.”
Going into the day, five-time Norwegian world champion Carlsen and Arjun were in a similar position. They had both won the first round of classical games despite playing with black. They were both playing white which meant they had the chance to set the tone of the game initially. The similarity was extended when they both decided to resort to the Alapin variation of the Sicilian in their opening.
But the games veered into different directions very quickly.
Gukesh put Carlsen under pressure early and a blunder on 19. Bb5 meant that the 17-year-old had a chance to push for a win.
“I thought the opening went quite well,” said Carlsen. “He had chances to make it equal but in order to go for the win, he needed to keep things unbalanced. But 19. Bb5… (it was a) crazy move, a blunder.”
After that move, Carlsen had to do a fair bit of firefighting to ensure that he was almost in an equal position.
“It was very unpleasant (to shift into defensive mode),” said Carlsen. “Before that I had pleasant choices. So it was not a great situation to be in there.”
Meanwhile, on the Erigaisi-Praggnanandhaa board, the latter kept hoping for a chance to get into the game.
“Arjun is very solid but after I saw Alapin,” said Praggnanandhaa, “I was hoping to get at least one chance because I felt the game would end without me getting any chance.”
And he got that chance on the 19th move when Erigaisi went with Nxc6. It made what had been a fairly equal opening suddenly seem imbalanced and Praggnanandhaa didn’t let go after that.
On Day 1, Praggnanandhaa had been a bit careless around move 30 and that had led to his loss but he knew that with black pieces he would need to be very precise. The queens were exchanged on move 25 and the middle had barely lasted a few moves. But the madness meant that he had a chance to force a result.
Erigaisi managed to get his pieces in a bind, with the bishop being pinned to the a-file by the black rook on the 26th move. And from that point on, Praggnanandhaa’s position kept getting stronger. He did not relinquish the advantage till the very end to make it 1-1 and force the match into the tiebreak.
The Gukesh-Carlsen match had progressed well too. It was an equal position but if anything, the Indian was slightly better. That was only until Carlsen found 33. a5.
“a5 was the key, I might save the game but not in the way I did,” said Carlsen. “That was the key, after that my moves are simple, I know that I will get to the time control. I was super happy to find that, gave me a clear target. After that, it was very hard for him.”
Carlsen knew when to pull the plug and played for a draw, which came in 59 moves. The result moves him into the semi-final where he will face local star Nijat Abasov.
The Azerbaijani, who has an Elo rating of 2632, has been on a giant-killing run. In this tournament alone, he had already knocked out Laurent Fressinet, Anish Giri, Peter Svidler, AR Saleh Salem; and now he has added Vidit Gujrathi to the list.
The two players had battled to a draw in Game 1 but Abasov was in no mood to be denied in Game 2. He launched a nice Queen-side attack and he developed his pawns a bit too quickly for Gujrathi to counter.
After that Gujrathi was always trailing and then it suddenly became an untenable position.
In the fourth and final quarterfinal, Fabiano Caruana of U.S. and Cuban-American Leinier Dominguez played out another tense and complicated game, but this time there was a winner after 94 moves. Caruana will play the winner of the Erigaisi-Praggnanandhaa match.
Carlsen reveals Candidates stance
No one quite knew whether the Norwegian will come back to play in the Candidates but he has confirmed he won’t.
“Under the current format there is absolutely no chance. I think everybody should operate under the assumption that I will not play at the Candidates and that everybody else who’s in the semifinals is qualified for the Candidates,” said Carlsen.
This means that the winner of the game between Praggnanandhaa and Erigaisi will be at the Candidates next year.
