Round 9 of the FIDE World Championship was performed at present between the reigning champion, GM Magnus Carlsen and his challenger, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi.

Lichess is offering a broadcast of the strikes being performed in real-time. Additionally, GM Nijat Abasov is offering recreation annotations and insights on the video games day by day. Round 9’s recreation annotations might be discovered under. Apologies for the delay in posting this one; our exterior content material administration system had points resulting from AWS being down.

(title picture – FIDE / Niki Riga)

After some difficult video games for Nepomniachtchi, it was his time – refreshed after the remaining day – to try to strike again with the white items. Many have been predicting Nepomniachtchi to combine it up from his earlier video games, given the stress he’s now below, with Carlsen within the lead with two wins (5 – 3 match rating). With a brand new haircut, Nepomniachtchi began off promising with 1. c4, with each gamers going off the crushed observe (which has been a specific motif of this match) away from opening principle. However, Nepomniachtchi appeared properly ready, and very like in a lot of their earlier encounters, the Russian appeared to have a slight edge by way of the opening and early middlegame.

https://lichess.org/research/embed/RoBvWqfx/qq4glFqA

Carlsen, nonetheless, is Carlsen and largely managed to equalise the place. However, judging from his use of time, it appeared very probably Carlsen was out of his preparation and developing with the very best strikes over the board. Nepomniachtchi nonetheless appeared to be ready and line he had larger understanding of – blitzing out a transfer earlier than going again to his relaxation space. Consequently, while the place gave the impression to be fairly balanced and equal, Carlsen was dealing with stress on the clock.

By transfer 23, the stress was so nice that Carlsen solely had 17 minutes left on his clock, with the subsequent time management at transfer 40. But then, disaster struck Nepomniachtchi. On transfer 27, Nepomniachtchi quickly performed 27. c5, a one transfer blunder which allowed his bishop to be trapped, and finally caught, for no compensation with the straightforward 27… c6.

Many commentators have been shocked by the transfer, some suspecting a transmission error from the DGT boards, however others had proposed c5 themselves earlier than being corrected by their co-hosts. All have been unanimous that the stress of enjoying the World Championship had probably taken its toll on Nepomniachtchi after a gruelling loss in recreation 6 and one other, smaller, blunder in recreation 8. In the press convention, Nepomniachtchi merely clarified he had missed that 27… c6 trapped his bishop.

Carlsen rapidly performed 27… c6 and spent the subsequent few strikes coordinating his items to take the trapped bishop. Safely carried out so, Nepomniachtchi had a final strive – making an attempt to advertise his a-pawn, however as soon as Carlsen neutralised that danger, Nepomniatchi resigned.

Currently, the match standings are 6 – 3 in favour to Carlsen, with a participant successful after they attain 7.5. Theoretically, Carlsen simply wants a win and a draw to have defended his World Championship title for a fifth time. As one other statistic, previous to the match of their earlier encounters, Nepomniachtchi had a optimistic file towards Carlsen, with 4 wins, 8 attracts, and 1 loss. Carlsen has now equalised this file (+4 =8 -4). Out of the present prime gamers, solely Andrei Esipenko and Andrei Volokitin can boast a optimistic file towards Carlsen in classical video games. 

The subsequent recreation will likely be performed on Wednesday 8 December 12:30 UTC. For extra particulars on the match, you possibly can assessment our first spherical recap which has extra data.

(GM Nijat Abasov achieved the GM title at simply 15. He was Azeri nationwide champion in 2017, additionally successful the Baku Open the identical 12 months. He has performed the Tata Steel Challengers and the Grand Swiss (twice), amongst many different tournaments, reaching his all-time peak score of 2670 in February 2020. He not too long ago represented Azerbaijan on the European Team Championships, successful a board prize with a efficiency score of 2760).