Champions Chess Tour Finals 2024: Semifinal Matches & Analysis

Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi will rematch in the Champions Chess Tour finals.

### GothamChess Champions Chess Tour Finals Day 4 Recap
* ♟️ The Champions Chess Tour semifinals featured **Magnus Carlsen** choosing **Maxim Vachier-Lagrave (MVL)** as his opponent, a best-of-six match.
* 🏆  **Ian Nepomniachtchi** decisively defeated **Alireza Firouzja** 3.5 to 0.5, showcasing exceptional technique, particularly in a "best Petroff game in 10 years".
* ♟️ Game 1 saw Nepomniachtchi's masterful Petroff Defense against Firouzja's attack, leading to a decisive win.
* ⚔️ Game 2 continued Nepomniachtchi's dominance with a Timman Sicilian, resulting in another victory with "utterly sensational chess".
* ♟️ The **Magnus Carlsen vs. MVL** semi-final was a back-and-forth battle, with both players showcasing impressive skills.
* 💥 MVL initially outmaneuvered Carlsen but a crucial blunder in game one allowed Carlsen to win with a "Rook takes C5" sacrifice.
* 🤯 Game two saw Carlsen employing an Accelerated Dragon, but MVL's strong endgame play secured a win.
* 🏆 Ultimately, **Magnus Carlsen** won the match against MVL, setting up a final rematch against **Ian Nepomniachtchi**, a repeat of the 2021 World Chess Championship.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Champions Chess Tour finals! This is the second-to-last day. Today we play the

semis. First, we had eight players who were whittled down to four, and yesterday Magnus Carlsen selected Maxim Vachier-Lagrave to play against

him in today's matchups. It's a best-of-six; first one to three and a half points wins. If it's three to three, we play in

Armageddon. And, uh, just to clarify, Magnus didn't just get to choose his opponent because he's Magnus

and everybody loves him. He was the top finisher of the round robin, and he gets to decide. The other matchup is

Ian Nepomniachtchi versus Alireza Firouzja. Folks, 15-second plugs: Gotham Chess chessboard at Walmart

and Amazon. Should be on Amazon Prime, uh, shortly. Chesley launch sale price; the, uh, public launch sale ends on December

the 27th. So if you want to get it by Christmas, uh, you still have some time. Don't worry. Uh, course owners, you guys

get a little bit longer. And last but not least, the Gotham Europe tour. This is version number one. If this tour does

well, we're going to be in four to six cities, four to six stops. Then the next one, uh, will

be even bigger. It's going to be in Brussels, London, Vienna, Munich, probably Berlin, uh, and maybe we'll get Paris in

there. We're going to see; link is in the description. That's all I have. Let's go! Uh, fourth out of five days, and this

match, uh, rather this tournament ends tomorrow, and then in a few days is the World Rapid and Blitz Championships. Here, not in my house,

uh, in—couldn't fit all the chess players in here—uh, in, in, in

Wall Street, uh, in the Financial District of New York City. Ian Nepomniachtchi versus Alireza Firouzja. This is a very fun matchup; very fun

Um, so let's go. We kick things off. Alireza plays the move e4, we have e5, knight f3, knight f6.

By the way, fun fact for those of you who have already tried Chessly—I'm not going to

plug anything; I'm just going to give you a little update um on Chessly. I've got the Scotch, I've got the Italian, I have

the Ponziani. I have all of those openings, uh, but one thing I haven't added just yet is the Petroff and the

Philidor, and that should come in a few days. And that way you can put your uh, whole repertoire together. And one thing we're

going to build by the middle, hopefully, of next year is something called Repertoire, where you can combine multiple courses into one, and that will

be the opening repertoire that you play. And you can drink and exercise. You don't need to play the Petroff as well as Ian Nepomniachtchi

does, but uh, and against it, I will actually recommend d4, which is a very powerful line, but the grandmasters

usually play knight takes e5 like this, and then they play this. This is known as the Classical Variation. This is

a uh, very reliable, very good line. Uh, we saw Magnus play this with the white pieces against Ian recently, and they had

a super complicated game. Ian, I would say, is the world's leading practitioner uh, of the Petroff Defense. He has played it in

multiple World Championships.  Knight d7, knight f6 is a very common idea, and uh, then black tries to play over here.

The Petroff is actually a very interesting opening to play with black, but you really should be like 1800, 1900, 2000.

There are much better openings to play before you play the Petroff, just practically speaking. Rook e8, rook e1.

Uh, Nepomniachtchi plays bishop g4. It's also a bit hot to handle, and we see the players...

Here, making their necessary preparations for their attacks, we see Fua lining up the bishops, lining up the queen, opening

up the rook. Uh, and uh, here Yan takes on F3 and basically says, 'Look, if you don't

checkmate me in the long run, you're going to have a migraine. Also, you're going to have bad pawn structure.' Uh,

Knight to H5 is the move that Yan chooses, and he would—I mean, he would love if the queens could get traded

pretty soon, and White would have no attack. Uh, Fua is not in the business of trading the queens, which is why in this

position, uh, he very quickly darts his pawn forward with F4, F5, and follows it up with F3. So this is actually a very

funny sequence. When have you ever seen three moves in a row where it looks like a pawn went

backwards? So the notation right now is F4, F5, F3. What—what? It's like the pawn is

glitching through time. No, it's because there's two of them, right? There's two pawns. Queen to H4, bishop back to F2. The

reason he's making all of these weird moves is that he's using the queen as a battering ram, and uh, he's got a pawn on the D6

square, which will probably be captured. Queen takes H2, chosen by Yan, but by taking that pawn, he waves the flag

in front of the bull, and the bull comes charging. Queen to F4, take; rook takes D6, and it is—uh, it is a very

complicated back-and-forth game. Knight to H5 played back by Yan. His pawn structure is healthy. All right, rook to D8,

rook to D8, and now he's taking over because Fua is trying to get in with his rook,

but again, in the long run, there is going to be one major problem in this position, and it's going to be the pawns of White.

because he has two sets of doubled pawns, and Black's pawns are healthier, more active, more agile, and

they're going to be a problem in the endgame, which is why Yan is very confidently trading all the pieces; he's

trying to trade the rook, he's trying to trade the knight for the bishop, and uh, Fu ends up having to sacrifice a little

bit of material to create counterplay, but Yan just takes on F5, and now he's still up a

pawn, and now his pawn is an F-pawn, which means it's closer to the middle. But uh, this is a game that Fu is not going to

defend. Uh, Yan is an excellent dynamic player, but ultimately, uh, you know, he's got he's got the Soviet

chess background, and that background is deeply ingrained and rooted in technique. Endgame, I'm just going to say right now,

this might have been the best Petroff game played in the last like 10 years for Black. Again, at the high level, I I I

can't name one that I've seen where Black just plays the Petroff so nicely. I mean, I mean, to play sometimes really

nice games, you need the opponent to sort of come up short. It did feel like Alireza sort of at some point was running

around like a—what did they say—a chicken with its head cut off or something like that. He was still trying

to kind of attack, but Yan played—Yan played fantastically. This game, Yan played this game just excellent, completely excellent, excellent technique, and um, I

would do a game review on this game. I don't know if it's uh—is it—can I—can I

do a game review on this game? Uh, yeah, okay. He only got a credit for 93% because somewhere in the middle,

you know, he was slightly worse, but yeah, it was a very, very nice game. Uh, that was the first game, though. Remember, it's a

Best of six, you have to win at least three times against your opponent. So, E4 in game number two. Sicilian is what Ali

Riza goes for. We have a Timon Sicilian. This is E6, Knight C6, uh, and um, this this

will also, in the long run of course, be on be on Chess.ly, which is pretty epic. Now, like I feel like to gain access to

literally every course is pretty awesome, cuz if you ever want to learn anything, you just can. Uh, but but in January I'm

going to spend most of my time building skills courses: so positional, strategic, tactical concepts; how to use your

bishops; how to use your pieces; pawn structures; weaknesses. If you can name a concept in chess, uh, there will be a

course for beginners as well. So A3, B5, and in this game, Ali Reza goes for an

endgame. It's again, I mean, it's kind of what I would call uh, an early-stage endgame because there are still many

pieces on the board, but the queens have been traded, a pair of minor pieces has been traded. Let's see who's got the

better technique. Yan induces a weakness, brings his pieces back, and now he's going to use the C1 square to jump the

knight back into the game. This is very, very nifty stuff; very crafty play. Bishop to G3, targeting the weakness. Ali Reza is

intent on giving it away instead of playing defensively or passively, uh, and Yan is going to be patient. He actually

ends up not taking it; doubles up, uh, he's going to try to double up now. He does F6,

but in every single position you're playing with two weaknesses. That is a weakness; that is a weakness. Uh, and black

has one, two, three, four, five, six pawns out of seven on the dark squares. Look at the black

Bishop. Now, if the black Bishop were here, the position would be completely fine. Unfortunately, I can't edit the board. I'm

not Chad GPT. Speaking of which, we need like a rematch soon, GPT versus Gemini. I feel like that's what we need. Look at

Yan just like walking into the black position, you know, bothering him with the Rooks, keeping trying to trade. One of the knights

is going to C4. This is Yan. In these first two games, he has played utterly sensational chess. Look at this; he just took two of Alireza's pawns. He's not letting him create counterplay. He trades

a pair of Rooks, wins a pawn back. He has multiple pawns promoting. Yeah, Yan, look at this! Look at this! This is

unbelievable. And okay, yeah, two pawns on A7 and H7. Of course, Black can't defend

himself. And if you thought the last game was good, yeah, this game, this game was even better. I mean, Yan did not make

a single inaccuracy in this game. Literally, he started the game; it was a Timmanov, which the computer

gives us plus 0.23 for White, and he just built, he played perfect chess

to start the day, and he ended up winning the match. He had to save a bad endgame, but he beat Alireza Firouzja three and

a half to one half. So, Yan Nepomniachtchi is going to be one of the finalists uh of the Champions Chess Tour

2024, and he awaits the winner of MVL versus Magnus. And I've got some games here for you. I've got some games; you're

ready? Here we go. C4. By the way, recently added English opening. I will put it in the description, like yesterday. You want

to learn the English for free? Seven days, try it for free on Chess.com, no card required. I will put it there if you already have

Something. God bless you. Uh, you can go check it out. The English is great. I love our English course, uh, C4, G6 though.

There's a little bit of a tricky move order. You know, you can play G3, which I think is actually my recommendation, uh,

and what's funny is, um, in my English Symmetrical with C4, C5, I like D3, Queen

D2, and this is a really fun line, uh, because what you do is you play like this, and then you put the knight on D5.

So you have like a bunch of, uh, positions where you can play like Knight D5, takes, takes, takes. This is the kind of position

that you go for. So you play D3, uh, D3, Queen D2, B3, Bishop B2 against the symmetrical...

Yeah, I I'll put it in the description. You can go learn it for free. Magnus plays it his own way, but watch this, this

watch this. He plays it a little later. He plays it a little later. So you can go learn the Magnus-style English, you

know. This is this is a very fun and edgy way, uh, to cause problems because you you try to trade the knight, you try to get

to the bishop, uh, and you try to, you know, maybe advance your pawns a little bit later in the game. But by the way, MVL is

great. I mean, MVL, I saw somebody wrote a YouTube comment yesterday that in 2024, he's beaten Magnus more than Magnus has

Magnus, what have you done?

GothamChess

Introduction to the second-to-last day of the Champions Chess Tour finals.

Semifinal matchups: Magnus Carlsen vs. Maxim Vachier-Lagrave and Ian Nepomniachtchi vs. Alireza Firouzja.

Match format: best-of-six, with Armageddon if the score is 3-3.

Magnus Carlsen chose his opponent due to his top finish in the round robin.

Brief commercial for Gotham Chess products and the Gotham Europe tour.

Ian Nepomniachtchi vs. Alireza Firouzja Match Analysis

Game 1: Analysis of the Petroff Defense played by Nepomniachtchi.

Assessment of the Petroff Defense's suitability for different skill levels.

Description of the strategic maneuvers and tactical exchanges in the game.

High praise for Nepomniachtchi's Petroff Defense performance.

Game 2: Analysis of the Sicilian Defense played by Firouzja.

Nepomniachtchi's dominant performance in the match, winning 3.5-0.5.

Magnus Carlsen vs. Maxim Vachier-Lagrave Match Analysis

Game 1: Analysis of the English Opening, highlighting Magnus Carlsen's unconventional approach.

Discussion of Vachier-Lagrave's blunder and Carlsen's subsequent advantage.

Game 2: Analysis of the Sicilian Defense, focusing on the Accelerated Dragon and unusual move order.

Summary of the match, highlighting Vachier-Lagrave's victory and the final score.

Carlsen's choice of opponent and its strategic implications.

Game 3: Analysis of the opening sequence mirroring Gukesh's World Championship moves.

Discussion of Vachier-Lagrave's missed opportunity for a decisive advantage.

Recap of the intense tactical exchanges and complications in the game.

Game 4: Analysis of the Alapin variation of the Sicilian Defense.

Analysis of the checkmate sequence and the missed opportunities by both players.

Final matchup announcement: Magnus Carlsen vs. Ian Nepomniachtchi.