Charity Cup Day 2: Carlsen, Duda Trailing As Leader Le Hits h3 Twice
GM Le Quang Liem continues to lead the preliminaries of the 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour's Charity Cup. With three wins on the second day, World Champion Magnus Carlsen is now in second place together with GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda.
How to watch?
The games of the Charity Cup preliminaries can be found here as part of our live events platform. The rounds start daily at 9 a.m. PT / 18:00 CET.
Vietnam's top GM is in excellent shape. The winner of the 2013 world blitz, now the head coach at Webster University, scored three wins and a draw on both days and leads by four points. The three-points-for-a-win system has rewarded him generously.
"This is amazing," Le said. "I did not expect this! I think this is my best performance ever on the Tour."
On the second day, Le could sacrifice on h3 in both of his black games:
Carlsen did a bit better on the second day but couldn't avoid another loss. GM David Navara managed to beat the Norwegian star for the first time in 15 years:
GM Praggnanandhaa R. took a big scalp as he beat world number-three GM Ding Liren in the eighth round. One cannot help but feel sorry for the Chinese top player, who saw his chances to qualify for the Candidates Tournament pass from sight as visa issues prevented him from playing the Grand Prix. Instead, Ding is limited to playing online events deep into the night.
Charity Cup | Day 2 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rating | Perf | Pts |
| 1 | Le,Quang Liem | 2723 | 2986 | 20 | |
| 2 | Carlsen, Magnus | 2854 | 2822 | 16 | |
| 3 | Duda, Jan-Krzysztof | 2720 | 2890 | 16 | |
| 4 | Niemann, Hans Moke | 2624 | 2791 | 14 | |
| 5 | Ding, Liren | 2752 | 2735 | 13 | |
| 6 | Rapport, Richard | 2762 | 2756 | 12 | |
| 7 | Praggnanandhaa, R. | 2664 | 2735 | 12 | |
| 8 | Van Foreest, Jorden | 2714 | 2728 | 11 | |
| 9 | Anton Guijarro, David | 2694 | 2682 | 11 | |
| 10 | Navara, David | 2700 | 2727 | 10 | |
| 11 | Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi | 2723 | 2683 | 10 | |
| 12 | Hansen, Eric | 2669 | 2612 | 8 | |
| 13 | Harikrishna, Pentala | 2716 | 2666 | 8 | |
| 14 | Jones, Gawain | 2672 | 2487 | 5 | |
| 15 | Lei, Tingjie | 2535 | 2377 | 2 | |
| 16 | Ju, Wenjun | 2560 | 2336 | 2 |
Don't forget that it's all about finishing among the top eight with two more days of play in the preliminaries. Almost anyone is still in reach of the knockout part of the tournament, although it will be particularly difficult for the two female players, GMs Lei Tingjie and Ju Wenjun.
All Games Day 2
The 2022 Champions Chess Tour's Charity Cup Masters runs March 19-27 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15+10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to a knockout that consists of one four-game rapid match during the quarterfinals and semifinals and two four-game rapid matches during the final. Play advance to blitz (5+3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black has four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match ends in a tie. The total prize fund of the event is $150,000, with $750 for each win and $250 for each draw in the preliminaries.
Previous report:
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