Goldmoney Asian Rapid: Carlsen, Ding Win 1st Set
GM Magnus Carlsen and GM Ding Liren won their first matches in the semifinals of the Goldmoney Asian Rapid tournament. Carlsen lost his first game to GM Levon Aronian but then scored 2.5/3 in the remainder, while Ding drew one and won two games vs. GM Vladislav Artemiev.
The Goldmoney Asian Rapid knockout games can be found here as part of our live events platform. GM Hikaru Nakamura, IM Levy Rozman, and IM Anna Rudolf are providing daily commentary on Nakamura's Twitch channel starting at 4:00 a.m. Pacific / 13:00 Central Europe.
Aronian-Carlsen 1.5-2.5
This match saw a good start for Aronian, who outplayed the world champion using the 9.d4 sideline in the Closed Ruy Lopez. His strategy on the queenside worked perfectly when Carlsen underestimated the power of a queen trade:
Carlsen hit back immediately in the next game, where he played a few unorthodox ideas in an isolated queen's pawn position and dominated in the endgame. Aronian, however, defended well and could have drawn a tough rook endgame:
After a relatively quick draw, Carlsen struck again with the white pieces, this time playing the London System. Also here, Aronian missed a draw deep in the rook endgame. There's a lot of endgame knowledge to pick up from this report!
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Artemiev-Ding 0.5-2.5
Ding seems to be in absolutely top shape. After holding his first black game, he won a fine game as White and then produced the following gem. It wasn't easy to pick the Game of the Day as this was an excellent candidate as well:
All Games Day 6
The Goldmoney Asian Rapid runs June 26-July 4, 2021 on chess24. The preliminary phase was a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advanced to a six-day knockout that 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 $100,000.
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