Madrid Candidates 16th June to Tue 5th Jul 2022

[LawrenceCooper]

Commentary teams located so far on Twitch:

Chess.com "Your expert hosts today are GM Jon Ludvig Hammer and IM Almira Skripchenko, with touchscreen analysis by IM Daniel Rensch and interviews by WGM Dina Belenkaya."

Chess24: "Live Commentary with Judit Polgar and Jan Gustafsson"

GMHikaru: Irina Krush & Benjamin Bok.

STLChessClub: Yasser Seirewan & Alejandro Ramírez.

On Youtube:

WorldChess: Fiona Steil-Antoni & Daniel Yuffa.

Also Jon Speelman: https://www.twitch.tv/jonspeelman

Ivanchuk: https://www.twitch.tv/ivanchukchess

Anna & Pia Cramling: https://www.twitch.tv/annacramling

[Nick Burrows]

Alejandro Ramirez - "the biggest lie i was taught about chess is that Q & N is superior to Q & B, in fact the Q & B are superior"

News to me!

[Jonathan Rogers]

(modern) candidates' question: what is the earliest round in which the subsequent winner has lost?

Answer: Round seven (Nepo, 2020, when already a point ahead)

[JustinHorton]

In older tournaments, I see Tal lost in round one in 1959

[JustinHorton]

Nepo pastes Ding with the black pieces

[Nick Burrows]

looking like 4 decisive games - amazing.

Maybe Firouzja will hold..

[JustinHorton]

You might end up with only one decisive game.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Nepo pastes Ding with the black pieces

Hmmm, that maybe wasn't in the script.

[JustinHorton]

And this time Nakamura's script doesn't see him escaping at the last moment

[LawrenceCooper]

Two wins and two draws with the last game just touching the 6 hour mark.

[Nick Burrows]

Superb day of fighting chess.

[Chris Rice]

Chessbase Round 1 report includes Giri's tweet: "Completely irresponsible play in Madrid. Great!"

[Nick Burrows]

Round 2

Rapport 1/2–1/2 Firouzja
Nakamura 1–0 Radjabov
Nepomniachtchi 1/2–1/2 Caruana
Duda 1–0 Ding Liren

Excited for Rapport v Firouzja - styles make fights.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Suspect Nakamura will be looking to recover with a win, but may overpress and lose, which would be a disastrous start for him, so will predict a draw here. Ding will almost certainly aim to stabilise with a draw - how will Duda handle that? Agree Caruana and Nepo (joint leaders) will be happy to conserve energy with a draw (how short can that be?). Rapport-Firouzja is unlikely to be a draw, IMO, for the reasons Nick gives above, but as he says it should be exciting regardless. So I predict four draws.

[NickFaulks]

I shall double down with four draws again, although the first game is a lottery.

Very impressed with Rapport's scrambled draw yesterday. Will we discover how he can handle a good position?