Chessable Masters QF: Aronian, Artemiev, Le, So Through To Semis
The Chessable Masters semifinals will see the matchups GM Vladislav Artemiev vs. GM Wesley So and GM Levon Aronian vs. GM Le Quang Liem. Favorites in their quarterfinal matches, GM Alireza Firouzja and GM Hikaru Nakamura were knocked out, the latter in an armageddon game with Artemiev.
The games of the Chessable Masters knockout can be found here as part of our live events platform. Daily commentary is provided on GM Hikaru Nakamura's Twitch channel starting at 8:00 a.m. Pacific / 17:00 Central Europe.
Aronian, the winner of the previous Champions Chess Tour event, is looking good again. In both his matches with Mamedyarov, the Armenian GM needed just three games to win.
However, as far as his actual play is concerned, Aronian said he had been "very sloppy" and only his third game on Wednesday "worked out nicely." The chosen game below, the first of the day, is a case in point.
In a typical Aronian remark, he added: "Sometimes I feel like I'm a complete patzer and then I think, if I am a complete patzer, then what do some guys who are not very good at chess think?"
Aronian will now be facing Le, who again proved to be in excellent shape as he beat Firouzja 2-0. Because Le won the first match as well, those two games were all it took. The Vietnamese GM, who won the world blitz championship in 2013, will play his first Tour semifinal.
A much longer affair was Artemiev-Nakamura, who first traded blows and then drew two games before both of them again won their white game in the 5|3 blitz. Then it was Artemiev who won another white game in the armageddon.
The opening was critical there when some potential wild complications turned into a rather dry middlegame position that was hard for Black to win:
Van Foreest was absolutely surprising on the first day by holding So to 2-2. Also on the second day, he put up a great fight with a very interesting first game:
All Games Day 5
The Chessable Masters runs July 31-August 8, 2021 on chess24. The preliminary phase was a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advanced to a six-day knockout that consists of two days of four-game rapid matches, which advance to blitz (5|3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match is tied after the second day. The prize fund is $100,000, including a $30,000 first prize.
Previous reports:
