Ian Nepomniachtchi returned to victory – Kommersant

The leader of Russian chess, Ian Nepomniachtchi, very convincingly won the strong Levitov Chess Week tournament, being two points ahead of his closest pursuers. This success was, in fact, the first for the Russian grandmaster after a series of failures that followed his loss in the spring match for the world title against the Chinese Ding Liren.

A major tournament, launched by the founder of one of the most popular chess YouTube channels, former chairman of the board of the Russian Chess Federation Ilya Levitov, was held in Amsterdam for the second time. The debut took place in 2019, when no one had any idea how many dramatic incidents awaited the world and especially Russia, including its athletes, in the near future. And the first winner of Levitov Chess was Ian Nepomniachtchi, who also had a lot of events ahead, some pleasant and some not so pleasant. In 2019, he was simply a very strong chess player. Soon Nepomniachtchi will become the undisputed leader of Russian chess, will receive the right to play with the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen in the match for the world title, will lose to him devastatingly, then will again achieve candidate status – and will again miss the chance to win the most prestigious title, now in a fight not with someone who refused it Carlsen, and with the Chinese Ding Liren.

This victory in the Levitov Chess Week competition was perhaps even more valuable for him than the previous one because of the context.

Match against Ian Nepomniachtchi with Ding Liren in Astana ended at the end of April, a terribly offensive defeat for a Russian. He led the entire time, but eventually lost in the tiebreaker. So, after this, both opponents tried to avoid the traditional pause in performances for such situations and immediately return to the competition. Ding Liren, having suffered several misfires that clearly did not decorate his new status, seemed to quickly realize that it would take him a long time to regain his previous tone, and disappeared from sight. Nepomniachtchi, unlike the Chinese, decided not to take any breaks and played according to his normal schedule, that is, quite often. Only his results did not correspond at all to either the rating or recent achievements.

Ian Nepomniachtchi suffered failure after failure. Place in the tail of the top ten at the Superbet Chess Classic super tournament, elimination in the 1/8 finals of the World Cup with a loss to Vidit Gujrati, loss to Magnus Carlsen in the Speed ​​Chess Championship online tournament with a humiliating score of 9.5:20.5, which perfectly illustrates the content of this match : against the backdrop of the Norwegian giant, Nepomniachtchi looked completely indistinct. In general, everything that happened to him was not even like a recession, but like a full-fledged crisis. And in this sense, winning Levitov Chess Week should have served the Russian well, at least psychologically – as proof that his class had not gone away after all.

It is important that the second Amsterdam tournament brought together an extremely bright line-up of participants who played rapid chess. There were no random people among them, just celebrities with an excellent track record. In this composition there was a place for the 14th and 15th world champions – Vladimir Kramnik with Viswanathan Anand, and for a group of elite grandmasters included in the top ten ratings of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) or not so far from it – Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Peter Svidler, Daniil Dubov, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Alexander Grischuk, Boris Gelfand.

Ian Nepomniachtchi accelerated unconvincingly. His starting games even hinted that the crisis had not gone away, since he was making so many gross mistakes that were completely unusual for him before.

But gradually Nepomniachtchi improved and in the second half of the competition he looked like his old self – a predator who does not miss the opportunity to fatally bite an opponent, who perfectly navigates difficult and sharp positions.

The style in which Ian Nepomniachtchi reached the prize is perfectly illustrated by statistics. In 18 games he has 11 wins – a rare “performance” even for rapid. The gap between him and his closest pursuers also speaks volumes about the quality of his play. They turned out to be Levon Aronian and Peter Svidler, two points behind Nepomniachtchi.

Alexey Dospehov