That’s a bold pawn sacrifice, inviting White’s horsey to jump in on e5, while planning to chop White’s b2 bishop, leaving Black a pawn down but with the bishop pair against White’s bishop and knight. After Nepomniachtchi avoided the Marshall Attack (Frank Marshall reportedly kept the novelty 8.c3 d5! under his hat for nine years before uncorking it for the first time against José Raúl Capablanca in 1918 Capablanca nevertheless found a way through the complications and won), Carlsen played the surprise knight a5: The chess nerds of the world held our hearts in our mouths to see whether we would be laden with another world championship match heavily featuring the Berlin Defense (3…Nf6), before, thankfully, we dodged that territory with the simple 3…a6.Ī few moves later we had our first critical moment.
Magnus Carlsen responded with the solid 1…e5-not the attacking Sicilian Defense (1…c5), which we’d seen in all six of his Black games in the 2018 world championship-and Nepo continued with 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. Here we go! Three years and one pandemic after the last world chess championship, we’re on again! Ian Nepomniachtchi opened up with the White pieces, and, as expected, sent down his usual 1.e4. (And in case you missed it, check out our match preview.) Game 1 Let’s recap the first eight games, using bold type to display moves that actually occurred in the games, and regular type to discuss hypothetical variations which did not. Along they way, they’ve given us both some of the least and most interesting chess seen at the highest level in a long time.Ĭarlsen heads into the final stretch of the match very much in the box seat, with the challenger’s uphill battle all but guaranteeing that we’ll see fire on the board as he’ll need to throw everything at the champion in order to overcome the deficit. Defending champion Magnus Carlsen has taken a 2-0 lead after eight games of the 14-game match against challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi. It’s been the best of times, it’s been the worst of times, at the 2021 World Chess Championship.