Nepo vs Carlsen in Blockbuster Finale! | Legends of Chess Final 4 Round 3
A tale of grit and rigour will be decided in a match between the two best speed players in the world! After losing the 2nd match by the slimmest of margins, Ian Nepomniachtchi won his 3rd Round Match against Anish Giri 3.5-2.5 to set up a dream final with Magnus Carlsen. It wasn't a smooth ride for Nepo, whose speed of play often resulted in painful mistakes, but his resourcefulness more than compensated for this drawback, as he saved 4 bad positions in the first 4 Rapid games. Anish Giri kept getting brilliant positions out of the opening from both colours, but his usually superb technique was missing from action, as Nepo remarkably saved lost positions, which he followed up by playing beautifully to win the second Blitz game and go through to the finals. Tanmay Srinath brings forth an exhaustive report.
Nepo 3.5-2.5 Giri:
This is a match where the scoreline never tells the whole story. First of all, Ian's opening preparation was either inspired or complete rubbish, as he twice went for the same dubious line as Black:
Game 1 saw Anish play brilliantly to get a serious advantage against this reversed London, but at the decisive moment he began to go off the hinges:
Giri-Nepo
Game 3 was similar - Anish got a completely one sided advantage as White, perhaps technically winning as well, but he failed to regroup his pieces in the best possible way:
Giri-Nepo
It wasn't just Anish who missed good chances. Nepo too failed to take his chance in Game 2:
Nepo-Anish
Anish got his chances later in the game, and as Anatoly Karpov assessed correctly in the commentary room, Black should have kept the minor pieces on:
Nepo-Giri
Game 4 saw Nepo return to 5.Re1 in the Berlin, the most critical try against 3...Nf6, but he failed to get anything going, and was even in slight trouble before agreeing to a draw to take the match to the blitz tiebreakers:
The first Blitz game probably decided the match, as Anish did not make the most of his chances yet again:
Giri-Nepo
Later in the game Anish missed a wonderful tactic, and would thank his lucky stars that Nepo didn't play the critical continuation:
Giri-Nepo
Game 6 finally saw the deadlock being broken, as Giri unwisely took on the role of material grabber and was duly punished:
Nepo-Giri