Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz: Magnus Carlsen returns to the chess arena

The Grand Chess Tour 2023 continued with its second stage, this time rapid and blitz, between the 19th and the 25th of May in the capital city of Poland, Warsaw. Ten super GMs, amongst which the former World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, competed in nine rounds of rapid (25min/ +10s) and eighteen rounds of blitz (3min/ +2s) for the first prize of $40,000. Before we dive in any further, let’s revisit the results of the tour’s first stage:

Fabiano Caruana grabbed the lead of the tournament in Round 4, after convincingly defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi with the white pieces. If you’re curious about the game, read about the tour’s highlights in my other blog post here. The American GM finished the tournament undefeated and was followed in the leaderboard by Wesley So and Alireza Firouzja.

Perhaps an unusual sight was that of Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi at the bottom of the leaderboard. In Round 5, GM Firouzja became the first player to win against the new World Champion. However, the level of exhaustion Ding and Nepo were experiencing cannot be overlooked. The World Champion title was dramatically decided on the rapid tie-break on the 30th of April, so both players barely had any time to recharge until their first round in Bucharest, on the 6th of May.

Now let’s have a look at the Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland

The presence of Magnus Carlsen was definitely exciting news for the chess audience. Carlsen withdrew from the fight for the World Chess Champion title last year and took a break from the chess arena. He confessed he was lacking the motivation to go through another match. Since his announcement in July 2022, Carlsen posted pictures of himself traveling, playing football and chess, streaming, and taking part in poker events. Read about Carlsen’s skills in our blog post.

However, the tournament didn’t start very well for the former World Champion. In the first round, he made a very surprising opening choice, the Polish Defense:

Black’s first move, 1. b5, is unusual, and for a good reason: it does not establish control in the center. This opening choice quickly put Magnus in a very dangerous position, and GM Wojtaszek used his favorable development to hold a strong grip over Black’s position:

 After 13. Bh6, the engine thinks white has a winning position and evaluates it at +1.5. From h6, the bishop controls the g7 square, so white can trap black’s knight with g4 next. Black played 13… Rg8, but this put the black king in an awkward situation since short-castling just became impossible. Despite Carlsen’s creative defensive ideas, the Polish GM proved his advantage after 38 moves.

After this initial loss, Carlsen won his first game in Round 7, against Romanian GM Bogdan Deac, followed by another win against GM Shevchenko Kirill.

But the best is yet to come. In Round 5 of blitz, the former World Champion started an exciting winning streak. Almost as if Carlsen needed a warm-up. He won 7 games in a row: against Shevchenko, Rapport, Giri, Aronian, Duda, MVL and So. In Round 12,

Carlsen drew against Deac and then won 3 more games against Wojtaszek, Shevchenko, and Rapport.

The bishop + rook endgame Jan-Krzysztof Duda found himself in marked a classic Carlsen. To be specific, an extremely balanced endgame that Magnus managed to cunningly turn into a victory:

If anything, white has a passed pawn on the a-file, whereas black is yet to create counterplay on the kingside. As shown by the clock, both players are playing with a few seconds left. From the position above, Magnus got rid of the a-pawn and create a passed pawn on the g-file, converting it into the following winning endgame:

After three more draws, he ended up winning the tournament: After a defeat and six consecutive draws in a row, his return in blitz is impressive and exciting.

While there’s still uncertainty around Magnus’s return to the fight for the World Championship, by playing the Candidates, we will get to see more of his games this year. Carlsen is going to play in Norway Chess 2023.

Author

MARIA CIOCAN