Giri, Vachier-Lagrave Lead Chessable Masters B Group
GMs Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave lead the B group of the Chessable Masters after day one. The two players scored 3/5 on a day with many draws. GM Ding Liren drew all of his games.
The games of the Chessable Masters can be found here as part of our live events platform. GM Aryan Tari, IM Levy Rozman, WGM Qiyu Zhou, and IM Aleksandr Ostrovskiy are providing daily commentary on Hikaru Nakamura's Twitch channel, embedded on Chess.com/TV.
The B group of the Chessable Masters has been called the "Candidates group" as five of the six players were active in the Candidates tournament in Yekaterinburg in March, while the sixth, GM Teimour Radjabov, feels he should be returned to the tournament again now that it was postponed due to the coronavirus crisis.
(On a side note, FIDE still intends to hold the second half in the same Russian city before the end of the year and is most likely going to invite Radjabov to the next Candidates.)
These Candidates players started with a relatively quiet day at the office, with five decisive games and 10 draws. First GM Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Radjabov, but then he lost to Caruana. The new leader then lost to Vachier-Lagrave before beating Radjabov, but just when Caruana was back at the top, he lost to Giri.
Here's MVL's win over Caruana, which ended in a rare checkmate on the board, and a pretty one.
With two leaders and three players on 50 percent, only one player is in serious danger of not making it to the knockout part. Radjabov lost two games, just like his opponent Caruana here, but the latter also won two, including this one, in a Rook vs. Rook and Bishop endgame.
Giri joined Vachier-Lagrave at the top with a win in the fifth round vs. Caruana. After losing a pawn, the American GM blundered a knight due to a nice checkmate idea:
Group B Round 5 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | 2860 | 2846 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 3.0/5 | 7.25 | ||
| 2 | Giri, Anish | 2731 | 2871 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 3.0/5 | 7.25 | ||
| 3 | Ding Liren | 2836 | 2780 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 2.5/5 | 6.25 | ||
| 4 | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | 2778 | 2791 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 1 | 2.5/5 | 5.75 | ||
| 5 | Caruana, Fabiano | 2773 | 2792 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 2.5/5 | 5.25 | ||
| 6 | Radjabov, Teimour | 2758 | 2649 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | 1.5/5 |
Games Group B, Day 1
The Chessable Masters runs June 20-July 5 on chess24 as part of the Magnus Carlsen Tour. The prize fund is $150,000 with a first prize of $45,000. The time control is 15 minutes for all moves with a 10-second increment after each move. No draw offers are allowed before move 40.
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