Charity Cup Day 5: Carlsen-Ding, Le-Duda In Semifinals
The semifinals of the 2022 Charity Cup will see the matches GM Magnus Carlsen vs. GM Ding Liren and GM Le Quang Liem vs. GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda. These four players eliminated GMs Hans Niemann, Jorden van Foreest, David Navara, and David Anton respectively in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.
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.
Carlsen-Niemann 2.5-0.5
Niemann's performance in the preliminaries was excellent, and it showed how much progress he has made over the last year. Facing the world champion meant a nice reward, but also the end of the tournament for the 18-year-old American GM.
Carlsen said his opponent fought hard in the first two games: "I thought the first and second games were very, very tense and pretty tough. Up to a certain point, I was definitely in command of both of those. but they got a bit out of hand."
Here's the first game of the match, where Niemann showed his feel for practical chess:
Ding-Van Foreest 2.5-0.5
Van Foreest had beaten Ding in a short and sweet Two Knights game in the preliminaries, but in their quarterfinal match, the Chinese top GM came for revenge. He won both his white games with a draw in between.
In the first game, Ding won with a typical Isolated Queen's Pawn position breakthrough:
Duda-Anton 2.5-0.5
Duda started with two wins and then drew the third game to reach the semis as well. He suggested that it looked smoother than it actually went: "Of course, it's great to reach a semifinal and win in such a convincing manner, but I don't think I played great chess today, I just didn't commit too many great errors and just grabbed my chances."
Game two in this match was decided by a tactic as Anton, in a better position, forgot to "check the checks" in the position:
Le-Navara 2.5-1.5
Of the four players eliminated on Wednesday, Navara was the only one to win a game. Le, however, won both of his white games and then drew game four to clinch the mini-match.
In game three, Le showed how unpleasant an early h2-h4-h5 can be for Black in the Anti-Grunfeld:
With apologies for an inaccurate bracket in the previous report, here's the correct one with results of the quarterfinals. The games of the semis start on Thursday at 9 a.m. PT / 18:00 CET.
All Games Day 5
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.
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