Magnus Carlsen Invitational: Prelims End, Final Four Starts Today (Friday)

Today's matches were more or less meaningless, and the matches reflected this to some extent - especially Carlsen's. He played four openings against Ding Liren that can be at best be called whimsical, and Ding's 3-1 win reflected this. (Carlsen disputes this, noting that none of the losses could be chalked up to the opening. I disagree, and here's why. Catching up from bad positions takes time and energy, and it's very difficult to maintain that level of intensity. Almost as soon as he achieved decent positions in the third and fourth games, he collapsed.)

The other three matches were comparatively normal. Ian Nepomniachtchi defeated Alireza Firouzja in an Armageddon game in a match with five decisive games out of five. Hikaru Nakamura lost the opener to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, but came back and won the Armageddon game. (MVL faltering in clutch games seems to be a pattern, not a coincidence. Hopefully if he fails to win the Candidates, whenver it's resumed, it won't be in this way.) Finally, Anish Giri finished a weird event by defeating Fabiano Caruana, going 2.5/3 before losing the meaningless finale. Giri lost five matches, "only" defeating Caruana and Carlsen. That's quite the consolation prize!

The games are here; I've only annotated the Ding vs. Carlsen games. (A man's gotta sleep sometime.) Here's what we have to look forward to in the final four: Nakamura-Caruana takes place today/tomorrow/Friday, and then Carlsen and Ding will have their rematch on Saturday, with the final on Sunday.