Round 14 of the 2022 Candidates: Nepo Wins (Still); Ding Beats Nakamura to Take Second

Happy 4th of July, America; our candidates both lost. What could have been…

In truth, it would have been difficult for anyone to stop Ian Nepomniachtchi from winning the 2022 Candidates, who won the event going away. He played better than anyone else in the event, and whenever he found himself in trouble - as he did today - a combination of resourceful play and help from his opponents bailed him out. Jan-Krzysztof Duda has had a poor tournament, but today he had a real chance against Nepo. Nepo’s Petroff prep was good, but Duda managed to create a messy position with kingside attacking chances. Nepo committed several inaccuracies after the opening, and if Duda had played 23.Rxd8+ he would have had real winning chances. Instead, he played 23.hxg6, and precise play by Black allowed him to slide into a drawn ending.

Thus Nepomniachtchi finished with an undefeated 9.5/14, the greatest Candidates score since the current format was introduced back in 2013. (Caruana had the previous record with 9 points in 2018; all other winners scored 8.5.) He has earned the right for a title tilt with Magnus Carlsen; whether it’s a championship worth celebrating is something we’ll have to see. (More on this below.)

As has been repeated ad nauseam on the blog and elsewhere, it’s possible that Carlsen will decline to defend the title. If he doesn’t, then the second-place winner here will face Nepo for the title. Coming into the round Hikaru Nakamura was in clear second, half a point ahead of Ding Liren. The pairing was perfect: Ding vs. Nakamura, with Ding getting the white pieces. Ding had nothing for a long time, but with plenty of time on the clock Nakamura twice failed to play …Rd8. Ding gave him one more chance to save the game with a big error on move 38, but that one was also missed. From there Ding showed excellent technique, increasingly restricting his opponent’s pieces while gaining material. Overall, a very good game by Ding, and the culmination of a remarkable comeback in the second half of the tournament. If he gets a championship match with Nepomniachtchi it will be well-deserved.

Nakamura thus finished in third - or rather, in equal third (and technically, fourth on tiebreak) with Teimour Radjabov after the latter’s weird win against Richard Rapport. Radjabov played a terrible opening and was just about lost after 18 moves. But rather than prepare g5 with 19.h4 or with 19.Nh4 followed by Nf5 and then h4, Rapport went into Elmer Fudd mode with the dreadful 19.g5?? fxg5? 20.Nxg5??, and while Radjabov did what he could to “forgive” him, he kept making mistakes. Ultimately, Rapport was a piece down with no attack at all, and resigned after Black’s 33rd move.

Finally, the tournament came to an end with another poorly played game between the two players who had nightmarish second halves in the tournament. Fabiano Caruana was given a gift when Alireza Firouzja played 19…f5? This gave Caruana a risk-free positional advantage, but when he decided to open the board straight away Firouzja was right back in the game. Further errors before the time control left Firouzja with a winning ending with an extra pawn, but he was unable to maintain the advantage. Alas, it was Caruana who made the final error, on the last move of the second time control. There were multiple moves to keep the draw, but 60.Ne4? cost him a second pawn, and he resigned three moves later. What a nightmare for Caruana, who was an undefeated +3 in the first half and a winless -4 in the second.

The games (with my notes) are here, and here are the final standings:

1.Nepomniachtchi 9.5 (out of 14)

2.Ding 8

3-4.Radjabov, Nakamura 7.5

5.Caruana 6.5

6.Firouzja 6

7-8.Duda, Rapport 5.5

Now let’s get to “what’s next”. Carlsen hasn’t said what he’s going to do—not exactly. But it is known that he has been in talks with FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, and has apparently proposed that a match not be - or not just be - a classical competition, but include a rapid (and blitz?) component. One element (hopefully not the whole thing, which would make a joke of the traditional world championship) would be the sets of rapid games used in the Meltwater tour events. (There, they play a best-of-four rapid match on day 1, with the day’s overall score counting like a single regular game of chess: a point for a win, half a point each for a draw, and nothing for a loss. Day 2: the same thing, and if it’s 1-1 there’s a blitz playoff culminating in an Armageddon game.) Given the current prevalence of rapid events, I’m open to its being a component of a championship match (though I’d rather it wasn’t, except in case of a tied match), but think that at least half of the overall points in the match should come from classical games. There’s already a world rapid championship, and there’s still value to classical chess. It isn’t perfect chess, but it’s a lot closer to it than 15-minute chess.

For more on this, see here (scroll down) and here.