Travels are over and I’m sufficiently caught up with most of “real” life to get back to blogging. So let’s get to it, beginning with the slightly old “news” about the Airthings Masters. It may not have been in all the papers, but it probably found its way to all of the chess sites. In case you missed it - perhaps because you were spending too much time with “Sydney” - Magnus Carlsen won the event. (One doesn’t need to be a chat bot to predict that the token “Magnus Carlsen” will most likely be followed by “won…”) In fact, aside from his one loss to Arjun Erigaisi in the second set of matches, he went undefeated the rest of the way, which meant not losing in two matches to Hikaru Nakamura.
The event was a double-elimination tournament, with players in the winners bracket playing best-of-four matches, going to an Armageddon game if necessary, while the losers bracket had best-of-two matches. The winners bracket for day three was Carlsen vs. Nakamura, and the losers bracket was Wesley So vs. Alexey Sarana and Arjun Erigaisi vs. Dommaraju Gukesh. So handled Sarana easily, winning 2-0, and Erigaisi defeated Gukesh in a mild upset, 1.5-.5. As for Carlsen-Nakamura, the first two games were hard-fought draws, and then they coasted into the Armageddon after two very short draws. With White, Nakamura had a nice opportunity early in the game to use a trick well-known from the Modern Benoni, but went for something more patient instead. A big error on move 29 left him with a lost position, but inaccuracies by Carlsen and good defense got him back to equality and even, briefly, a slight advantage. That didn’t last, however, and in the end the only question was whether Carlsen would manage to find a win or settle for a draw. In the end, it was a draw, and that won the match.
That gave Carlsen a day off, as two rounds of the losers bracket were needed to give him his final challenger. So beat Erigaisi, winning a marathon game and drawing the sequel to reach the final losers bracket match against Nakamura. This was a rematch of day 2 in the winners bracket, in which all five games - four regular games plus the Armageddon (with Nakamura as Black) were drawn. This time around the (two) rapid games were also drawn, with So failing to convert a winning advantage in game 1. As for Armageddon, So again had White, and again failed to convert a winning advantage, eventually even losing.
The final was therefore, once again, Carlsen vs. Nakamura. For a change, there was no Armageddon this time around. Carlsen won convincingly with White in game 1 and drew game 2 without any real problems. In game 3, however, Nakamura was winning in a rook ending, but couldn’t figure out how to put Carlsen away. After that close call, Carlsen finished strongly in game 4. Even with Black, he was soon better and reached a winning position. In fact, he was winning in the final position where they made a draw.
And so, Magnus Carlsen wins yet another tournament. For the games played since day 1, have a look here; I’ve annotated a good number of them (though not all).