GM Magnus Carlsen received his fifth match in a row on the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals however misplaced his good rating as GM Le Quang Liem solely went down within the armageddon recreation of their tiebreak. The Vietnamese GM thereby took one match level away from the world champion, who can nonetheless clinch match victory with a spherical to spare with a win on Saturday.

Le put up an incredible combat and managed to beat Carlsen twice on sooner or later: within the second speedy recreation and within the second blitz recreation of the tiebreak, on demand. That alone deserved applause. Was he going to drag off one other match victory, as he did again in April on the Oslo Esports Cup?

Here’s that on-demand blitz win:

This meant that we acquired to see the primary armageddon recreation of the match, the place Carlsen acquired the white items for what was now a must-win for him. He performed with 5 minutes on the clock, whereas Le acquired 4 minutes with draw odds.

“The blitz was actually poor,” mentioned Carlsen, “however I felt within the armageddon recreation, I’m not so positive about his alternative of opening as a result of I really feel like typically it is simpler to have the minor items there in blitz.”

On the match as an entire, he mentioned: “It was clearly quite a bit more durable than among the different matches. It was a mixture of him taking part in match and me probably not not discovering my rhythm after the primary recreation so I gotta do higher within the final two matches.” 

The hole with runner-up Duda elevated by another level within the standings because the Polish GM misplaced his second match in a row, but additionally within the tiebreak, so he acquired one level. After a match that noticed six straight wins for the white items it was Pragg who held the armageddon recreation to a draw as Black.

We’ll have a look at the fourth speedy recreation, a must-win for Pragg:

Winning his third match in a row with no tiebreak, So has now collected 9 factors and has jumped to 3rd place within the standings. He defeated a struggling GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in all three video games. The Azerbaijani GM appears to endure probably the most from taking part in late at night time, contemplating him blundering like this:

GM Arjun Erigaisi, nevertheless, appears to have absolutely adjusted to taking part in after midnight. He received his second match in a row, towards an additionally struggling GM Anish Giri. Two wins, adopted by a draw was sufficient for a fast match victory.

Here’s the primary recreation, which set the tone of the match:

Day 5 Standings

All video games day 5

Lesson on how to not watch a @warriors match in US by @rpragchess pic.twitter.com/X6SFBohx56

— Ramesh RB (@Rameshchess) November 19, 2022

Some gamers went to the Chase Center at night time to see (or not see!) the Golden State Warriors beat the New York Knicks 111-101.

The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals happen November 14-20, 2022 on chess24. The format is an eight-player round-robin; every spherical has four-game speedy matches, and the winner will get three factors. The time management is quarter-hour for every recreation plus a 10-second increment. A tiebreak follows instantly in case of a 2-2 tie and in that case, the winner will get two factors and the loser, one.

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