Carlsen Back On Top, Niemann Possible Opponent Again
GM Magnus Carlsen is back in the lead at the Julius Baer Generation Cup after scoring three wins and a draw on the third day of the preliminaries. GM Hans Niemann is still in contention of qualifying for the knockout phase and might be paired with Carlsen later in the tournament.
Seemingly unaffected by the tumultuous times in the chess world, Carlsen played another day of fine chess in the Generation Cup on Tuesday. Just like on the first day, he scored 10 out of a possible 12 points, and his only loss so far is the game he resigned quickly vs. Niemann.
After skillfully outplaying GM Ivan Saric (a textbook endgame showing the power of the bishop pair), the world champion drew a 122-move game with GM Vasyl Ivanchuk, who held with a fortress of a rook and knight vs. a queen and pawn.
Carlsen's win in round 11 must have felt nice; GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda surely had beaten him too many times for his taste in recent years.
With three rounds to go, it's all about finishing in the top eight who will play a knockout starting on Thursday. Besides Niemann, many more of the up-and-coming players are doing well, such as GM Arjun Erigaisi (just a point behind Carlsen), GM Praggnanandhaa R. and GM Vincent Keymer (currently sharing fourth place), while GM Christopher Yoo can still make it as well.
While Carlsen has secured his qualification, it turns out that his most likely opponent in the quarterfinals is... Niemann.
Carlsen has clinched a spot in the #JuliusBaerGenerationCup quarterfinals, so all that's left to be determined (for him) tomorrow is who his first knockout-round opponent will be. Here's the possibilities sorted by likelihood.#ChessChamps pic.twitter.com/enOVtrrfqZ
— Chess by the Numbers (@ChessNumbers) September 20, 2022
Niemann scored a remarkably quick win vs. GM Levon Aronian, who mishandled a Dragon-like Sicilian where White seemed to be combining short castling with a kind of Yugoslav Attack. "I think it was a strange game," Aronian said afterward. "I think Hans played very, very strange moves at some point, and I think I lost my concentration and blundered."
The move of the day was by Duda. 10.Ne5 was pretty spectacular, but 14.exd6 was really great. Too bad the engine spoils it by giving Black the advantage right before!
Julius Baer Generation Cup | Day 3 Standings
All Games Day 3
The 2022 Champions Chess Tour's seventh event, the Julius Baer Generation Cup, takes place September 18-25, 2022 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to the knockout phase which 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 $150,000.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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