The semifinals of the 2022 Charity Cup will see the matches GM Magnus Carlsen vs. GM Ding Liren and GM Le Quang Liem vs. GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda. These four players eliminated GMs Hans Niemann, Jorden van Foreest, David Navara, and David Anton respectively in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

Carlsen-Niemann 2.5-0.5

Niemann’s performance in the preliminaries was excellent, and it showed how much progress he has made over the last year. Facing the world champion meant a nice reward, but also the end of the tournament for the 18-year-old American GM.

Carlsen said his opponent fought hard in the first two games: “I thought the first and second games we very, very tense and pretty tough. Up to a certain point I was definitely in command of both of those but they got a bit out of hand.”

Here’s the first game of the match, where Niemann showed his feel for practical chess:

Ding-Van Foreest 2.5-0.5

Van Foreest had beaten Ding in a short and sweet Two Knights game in the preliminaries, but in their quarterfinal match, the Chinese top GM came for revenge. He won both his white games, with a draw in between.

In the first game, Ding won with a typical Isolated Queen’s Pawn position breakthrough:

Duda-Anton 2.5-0.5

Duda started with two wins and then drew the third game to reach the semis as well. He suggested that it looked smoother than it actually went: “Of course it’s great to reach a semifinal and win in such a convincing manner but I don’t think I played great chess today, I just didn’t commit too many great errors and just grabbed my chances.”

Game two in this match was decided by a tactic as Anton, in a better position, forgot to “check the checks” in the position:

Le-Navara 2.5-1.5

Of the four players eliminated on Wednesday, Navara was the only one to win a game. Le, however, won both of his white games and then drew game four to clinch the mini-match. 

In game three, Le showed how unpleasant an early h2-h4-h5 can be for Black in the Anti-Grunfeld:

With apologies for an inaccurate bracket in the previous report, here’s the correct one with results of the quarterfinals. The games of the semis start on Thursday at 9 a.m. PT / 18:00 CET.

All Games Day 5

The 2022 Champions Chess Tour’s Charity Cup Masters runs March 19-27 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15+10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to a knockout that consists of one four-game rapid match during the quarterfinals and semifinals and two four-game rapid matches during the final. Play advance to blitz (5+3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black has four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match ends in a tie. The total prize fund of the event is $150,000, with $750 for each win and $250 for each draw in the preliminaries.

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