Carlsen On Brink Of Victory After Armageddon Win
GM Magnus Carlsen won his fifth match in a row at the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals but lost his perfect score as GM Le Quang Liem went down only in the armageddon game of their tiebreak. The Vietnamese GM thus took one match point away from the world champion, who can still clinch tournament victory with a win on Saturday with a round to spare.
The games of the Champions Chess Tour Finals can be found here as part of our live events platform.
Le put up a great fight and managed to beat Carlsen twice in one day: in the second rapid game and in the second blitz game of the tiebreak on demand. That alone deserves applause. Was he going to pull off another match victory, as he did back in April at the Oslo Esports Cup?
Here's that on-demand blitz win:
This meant that we got to see the first armageddon game of the tournament. Carlsen got the white pieces for what was now a must-win for him. He played with five minutes on the clock, while Le got four minutes with draw odds.
"The blitz was really poor," said Carlsen, "but I felt in the armageddon game, I am not so sure about his choice of opening because I feel like generally it's easier to have the minor pieces there than blitz."
On the match as a whole, he said: "It was clearly a lot tougher than some of the other matches. It was a combination of him playing a good match and me not really not finding my rhythm after the first game so I've got to do better in the last two matches."
The gap in the standings with runner-up Duda increased by one more point as the Polish GM lost his second match in a row but also in the tiebreak, so he got one point. After a match that saw six straight wins for the white pieces, it was Pragg who held the armageddon game to a draw as Black.
We look at the fourth rapid game, a must-win for Pragg:
Winning his third match in a row without a tiebreak, So has now collected nine points and has jumped to third place in the standings. He defeated a struggling GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in all three games and in the first, in Karpovian style:
GM Arjun Erigaisi, however, seems to have fully adjusted to playing after midnight. He won his second match in a row, against an also struggling GM Anish Giri. Two wins, followed by a draw, were enough for a quick match victory.
Here's the first game, which set the tone of the match:
Day 5 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Score |
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | 2848 | 14/15 | |
| 2 | Jan-Krzysztof Duda | 2798 | 10/15 | |
| 3 | Wesley So | 2774 | 9/15 | |
| 4 | Le Quang Liem | 2775 | 8/15 | |
| 5-6 | Praggnanandhaa R. | 2750 | 6/15 | |
| 5-6 | Arjun Erigaisi | 2733 | 6/15 | |
| 7 | Anish Giri | 2732 | 4/15 | |
| 8 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | 2756 | 3/15 |
All games day 5
Lesson on how not to watch a @warriors match in US by @rpragchess pic.twitter.com/X6SFBohx56
— Ramesh RB (@Rameshchess) November 19, 2022
Some players went to the Chase Center at night to see (or not see!) the Golden State Warriors beat the New York Knicks 111-101.
The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals take place November 14-20, 2022 on chess24. The format is an eight-player round-robin; each round has four-game rapid matches, and the winner gets three points. The time control is 15 minutes for each game plus a 10-second increment. A tiebreak follows immediately in case of a 2-2 tie and in that case, the winner gets two points and the loser, one.
Previous coverage:
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