Missed round one yesterday. Round two in 30 minutes. Looks like Harikrishna let Aronian play a Marshall in round one. And Loek played a pretty interesting game.

I'm now worried about Rapport's mental health: he has spoiled his otherwise brilliant game vs So in an inexplicable way On the positive side, this game has propelled Wesley to the 3rd position on the live rating list.

That's too bad. Rapport plays very interesting chess and I really want him to do well.

Adhiban playing King's Gambit against So today. Looks good.

When Rapport plays with Wei, it's always exciting, but their today's game was an even bigger mess than usual

I didn't watch the broadcast so I'm not entirely sure which line Richard overlooked.

Some superficial analysis under the spoiler:

Adhiban is great, I am becoming a fan. Plays The French for the first time in his life for a win against the WC challenger, then plays the King's Gambit (no idea if he plays it regularly, I'm going to guess not) against the hottest player of the past year.

While So was in potential trouble in the actual opening and seemed to either forget some prep or move order to start with it does look like he achieved an easy draw once it got to the middlegame.

Agree, I'd barely heard of him despite him having been nearly 2700, so it seemed like a big break for him to get invited to such a supertournament. But with that kind of enterprising play hopefully he'll get many more invitations.

I'm pretty sure he won the challengers last year. But maybe this could lead to some sort of invites. I think he just does a bunch of Swiss tournaments right now but this is his first chance against the elite.

You're right of course. I like that tradition of giving the winner of each event a chance in the next section up. Hoping for Gawain Jones to make it this year, though I suspect a few on this forum will be rooting for Jeffrey Xiong instead.

I tuned into the Carlsen-Giri match at exactly this stage:



I actually saw Bf3 (what Carlsen played) immediately, then saw the Q promotion and figured it was over aka had a nap:



Carlsen misses mate from here and ends up in a hopeless bishop and rook pawn endgame for a draw.

Even Carlsen manages to Giri a game every now and again.

Laughed at the Giri joke.

But seriously, how big of a blunder is this: him missing mate from this seemingly pedestrian position? I suck donkey dick and can find the W. Or is it just one of those "this is a world class match there's no way this mate is this easy" moments where he didn't go through the continuation the whole way and it bit him?

Well, in the exact same round Karjakin and his opponent missed winning a piece on move 11 or 12 or something. I mean, blunders definitely happen. The most ironic thing about the missed mate by Carlsen is that it is somewhat reminiscent of his mate vs. Karjakin (in a rapid game) to win the title.

I wasn't paying much attention this morning to the games (sick and tried to sleep in) but it looks like Carlsen got kind of smashed. I'd imagine that game is much more worrisome to him than missing the mate in the Giri game.

This is how they should do elite tournaments, have it large enough so that they can have several non-elite players who are willing to play exciting chess. Between Rapport, Wei Yi, Adhiban, and Loek, there are multiple thrilling games in every round.

Carlsen's miss does look like a big blunder. In such an obviously unsafe king position, any super-GM must switch on his mate searcher and go to a bigger depth than his normal search depth.

I'm not worrying about Magnus. He'll just make a note to self not to be that aggressive when the position is not calling for it. I mean his 22... d3?! (vs Rapport) making the d-pawn lose the c-pawn's support too early, then 26... Re8?! allowing the pawn fork on e5, likely with a full intention of a positional knight sac for 2 pawns that however failed spectacularly because of his back rank weakness that he had underestimated.

This aggression was probably a loss of patience and his way to reaffirm himself in his sharp attack ability after the confidence loss following the game with Giri, but going into a double-edged position vs none other than Rapport is too risky.

I don't really think top-level chess is as simple as you are making it out to be.

Well, that's why I don't play high-level chess nor high-level poker It often looks to me like top human players mind**** themselves because I don't see the deep factors of the position that they do and I don't understand the interaction between the factors.

I guess the main point is that chess is primarily governed by concrete analysis and more complicated positional/strategic elements, and ideas like "22.-d3 is bad because it makes the d-pawn lose the c-pawn's support too early" are the sorts of post hoc just-so explanations that aren't very reliable. One can always come up with simple explanations to either support or condemn moves. If 22.-d3 were actually good and Black abstained from playing it, one could easily say Magnus should make a note to himself to avoid "not pushing the dangerous passed pawn when he has a chance". And also it's not really too uncommon at all for good moves in a given position to go against the principles, or for the most principled moves to be not so good.

Nepo has tried to become the modern Morphy (apparently, he was counting on 15... Nbd7? 16. Bxf6 gxf6 17. Rxd7 and didn't think 15... Nfd7! would be Black's best move) but instead, his unsound sacrifice has propelled Wesley to the 2nd place on the live rating list, 16 point behind Magnus, and secured So's victory in the Tata Steel, congrats to his fans

Thanks! On behalf of Wesley's fans everywhere I will graciously accept! The parade here in MN is being scheduled as we speak.