Norway Chess, Round 8: Carlsen Defeats Rapport
That Magnus Carlsen guy is pretty good. Three rounds ago, he was tied for next-to-last place, and now he's only half a point out of first in the Norway Chess tournament. He won his third classical game in a row, this time against tournament leader Richard Rapport; he's looking like a boss. Rapport has played very well all tournament, and even in this game he only made one real error, and this after suffering under pressure for hours and hours. So we shouldn't assume that Rapport will be passed by the world champion, but he will have to play great chess to keep the lead.
Meanwhile, Carlsen's challenger seems to be wearing cement shoes. Despite having the white pieces against the tournament's (by far) bottom seed and (by far) tailender, Aryan Tari, Ian Nepomniachtchi was utterly outplayed. He played a stunningly bad game for a player of his super-elite caliber.
Finally, Alireza Firouzja made it three decisive classical games in the round, as he defeated Sergey Karjakin with the black pieces. Karjakin essayed a fascinating anti-Najdorf idea, but quickly went wrong - badly wrong. 10.Nh4 was a misstep, and 16.Ned5 was a blunder. It was a good game by Firouzja, who leapfrogged Nepo into third place. As for Karjakin, he, like Nepo, was almost unrecognizable.
Today's games, with my comments, are here. I won't rehearse the scoring system - you can see my previous entries on the event for the details - but will give the round 9 pairings, with player scores in parentheses:
- Carlsen (15) - Karjakin (8.5)
- Rapport (15.5) - Nepomniachtchi (9.5)
- Tari (6) - Firouzja (12)