14 November 2017
Magnus Carlsen Overplays Ding Liren
Champions Showdown is finishing in Saint Louis.
Photo by Lennart Ootes
The Champions Showdown, a series of four matches of prominent chess players, is finishing in the Saint Louis Chess Club. The format is experimental: the games feature no delay or increment; each player has 30 minutes for the first 4 games, 20 minutes for the next 6, 10 minutes for the next 8, and finally only 5 minutes for the last 12 game. Scoring: G/30 - 5 points per victory, G/20 - 4 points, G/10 - 3 points, and G/5 - 2 points. The US stars Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So crushed Veselin Topalov, Alexander Grischuk and Leinier Dominguez in blitz to take the $60,000 winner’s prize in their matches.
In the fourth match, the reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen defeated the World Cup finalist Ding Liren in G/10 games 6.5-1.5 to make his overall advantage decisive. The Norwegian is leading 50-18, and even if the Chinese grandmaster wins all 12 blitz games (2 points for a win), he still wouldn’t manage to catch up with his opponent.
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