Chess: Carlsen leads amid controversy before the final weekend at Wijk

Magnus Carlsen leads his nearest rival, Anish Giri, by half a point going into the weekend’s final three rounds of the “chess Wimbledon” at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, but the world champion’s declared target of an all-time record 2900 rating is proving harder to achieve.

Play is, as usual, free and live to view online, starting Friday and Saturday at 1pm BST, and Sunday at 11am. Chess.com is the place to watch for close-ups of the players in action.

Carlsen, who has won Wijk a record seven times, began the tournament on a rating of 2865, far ahead of his rivals and with a personal peak of 2889 already recorded in 2014, but his unbeaten total of 7/10 after Wednesday’s 10th round is only enough for a measly one point gain.

To state such an ambition in public is an open invitation for a spoiling reply. Sergey Karjakin, who narrowly lost his 2016 world title match with Carlsen, responded in their 10th-round game, which was drawn by repetition in 16 moves and 15 minutes play after a Berlin Ruy Lopez sequence played many times before.

Karjakin made a joke of it on Twitter, using the hashtag “saynoto2900” and adding “learned some tricks from the world champion” in reference to Carlsen’s three previous games with the identical sequence. Carlsen fans were furious, though the champion himself was relaxed about it, pointing out that it was the day before the rest day and that Karjakin was consolidating his move into the top half of the score table following a poor start.

Carlsen’s most impressive win has been against Shak Mamedyarov at a stage when he and the world No 9 from Azerbaijan were tied for the lead. White’s use of his doubled rooks on the a1-a8 file to exercise board control is a rare technique well worth remembering.

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