Chess: Carlsen overcomes Covid as Russia’s No 1 shares anti-war message

Magnus Carlsen has had a rough week at the $150,000 online Airthings Masters, but the world champion still overcame the effects of Covid to reach the two-day final, starting at 5pm on Friday. Free to view live commentary by England’s David Howell and Jovanka Houska is available on chess24.com.

Carlsen was beaten four times in 15 games in the qualifying round, and blamed the defeats on symptoms which were similar to brain fog: “I lacked energy, which made it hard to focus, and when I tried to think I blundered.” Those who beat Carlsen included two teenagers: Russia’s Andrey Esipenko, 19, who had already scored against Carlsen at Wijk 2021, and India’s Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, 16.

The world champion kept his equilibrium, made sure of qualifying for the final eight, then eliminated Vietnam’s Le Quang Liem and Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev. By the time of Thursday’s semi-final the world No 1 was back to his normal fearsome strength, playing the first game of the match in a classical attacking style.

Earlier, in the qualification rounds, Carlsen faced the Dragon Sicilian, and followed a formula advocated by Bobby Fischer: open up the h file, sac pieces if needed, expose the black king, then checkmate.

Thursday coincided with the invasion of Ukraine, and apart from Carlsen the other semi-finalists were all Russian. Ian Nepomniachtchi. crushed by the Norwegian in their world title match in Dubai two months earlier, was impressively back in form, winning the qualification section with rounds to spare and then eliminating the young pretender Esipenko in his semi-final.

Away from the board, Nepomniachtchi published a tweet which said: “History has seen many Black Thursdays, but today is blacker than the others.” It was signed with