Tepe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament

Photo: Peter Doggers

Jiner Zhu might have looked calm when she left the playing venue, but an observant spectator could see that she crumpled up the score sheet she had in her hand. She was clearly disappointed after the fifth round of the TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament.

Jiner Zhu played creatively and invaded the area around the Norwegian’s king with her pieces. Carlsen admitted after the game that he had a lucky escape after a late mistake by his Chinese opponent.

Carlsen up to Third Place

With his win in the fifth round, Carlsen has now advanced to third place, with two rounds to go. Ahead of him are two players, Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, who managed to escape the grip of Andy Woodward and secured a draw after 104 moves, and Arjun Erigaisi, who also landed on 3½ points after defeating Jorden van Foreest.

The Dutchman who had such great success in his game against Carlsen yesterday had to throw in the towel after a mere 30 moves. A heavy blow for van Foreest, while Erigaisi had good reasons for feeling happy afterwards. The Indian grandmaster has had a down period so far this year, but in the TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament, he has shown that he is back! 5 rounds into the tournament in Malmo, he is back in the world top 10 in the FIDE rating list.

Grandelius Gets on the Board

Nils Grandelius has had a disappointing start with four losses in a row, but in the fifth round, he managed to get on the board. He played an undramatic draw against Nodirbek Abdusattorov that only lasted 29 moves.

Standings After Round 5

1-2) Erigaisi, Erdogmus 3½p
3-4) Abdusattorov, Carlsen 3p
5-6) van Foreest, Woodward 2½p
7) Zhu 1½p
8) Grandelius, ½p

Next Round

Erdoğmuş – Abdusattorov
van Foreest – Grandelius
Zhu – Erigaisi
Woodward – Carlsen

Photo: Peter Doggers

Analysis of the Round 5 Game Carlsen-Zhu

Photo: Peter Doggers

Sensational things are happening in this year’s TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament. World number one Magnus Carlsen lost against Jorden van Foreest, and the tournament leader is a 14-year old who skipped school to come to Malmo.

Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus from Turkiye is taking the chess world by storm at the moment. A couple of weeks ago, he became the youngest ever to pass 2700 in rating, and now he is leading the prestigious TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament. The question is, what will he achieve first? Turn 15 or pass 2800 in rating?

After four rounds, Erdogmus leads with 3 points, while world number one Carlsen is in fifth place. These two will play each other in the last round. It already feels like something spectacular might happen at the Elite Plaza Hotel on that day.

Congratulations to those of you who managed to secure a ticket for the last round on Thursday!
Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus took the lead after his win against Nils Grandelius on Monday. The Swedish grandmaster has had a poor start with four consecutive losses. He does not seem to be at his best. At the same time, Erdogmus seems to be impossible to stop.

Their game was even until move 25, where Grandelius took the d6 pawn with the wrong piece – the pawn instead of the rook. This allowed Erdogmus to play the killer move 26.Nd5!
After this, Grandelius simply could not save the game, and had to register a fourth loss.

Jiner Zhu’s First Win

Jiner Zhu won her first game in the tournament by trapping Andy Woodward’s knight on the queen side. It turned into a quick victory for Zhu, who played some precise moves and concluded with a temporary queen sacrifice that forced Woodward to resign.

Abdusattorov Had the Winning Chances

The game between Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Arjun Erigaisi became a long and hard fight, where Abdusattorov long had an advantage, with Erigaisi having problems with a badly placed queen on a6.
However, Abdusattorov never managed to get a decisive advantage, and Erigaisi got away with half a point.

Standings After Round 4

1) Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 3p
2) Nodirbek Abdusattorov, 2½p
3) Arjun Erigaisi, 2½p
4) Jorden van Foreest, 2½p
5) Magnus Carlsen, 2p
6) Andy Woodward, 2p
7) Zhu Jiner, 1½p
8) Nils Grandelius, 0p

Round 5

Andy Woodward – Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş
Magnus Carlsen – Zhu Jiner
Arjun Erigaisi – Jorden van Foreest
Nils Grandelius – Nodirbek Abdusattorov

Photo: Ingemar Falk

Photo: Peter Doggers

Jorden van Foreest on his victory against Carlsen: “I never thought it would happen”

Jorden van Foreest was woken up at 1:30 AM when the fire alarm went off at the players’ hotel. Despite his disrupted night’s sleep, it was he who, just over 12 hours later, “set the board on fire” – and managed to defeat world number one Magnus Carlsen in a thrilling game in the fourth round of the TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament.

Here is Peter Doggers’ interview with Jorden van Foreest, conducted right after the victory that is making headlines throughout the chess world.

Jorden, your first victory over Magnus Carlsen, the former world champion but still the world number one. This must be an incredible feeling?
– Yeah. It’s crazy, right? It was also such a crazy game, and it just finished, so I haven’t even had time to collect my feelings or thoughts or anything like that. But, yeah, honestly, I didn’t think it would ever happen, so it’s a big moment.

Let’s start from the beginning. You went for the f4-variation in Najdorf. I know that Erwin l’Ami lost a game with black against this last year. Did that influence your choice of line?
– Yeah, a little bit. But also, I mean, Magnus can play any opening really, so you never really know what to expect. But Najdorf is always one of the options. I just thought, which line haven’t I played and maybe he wouldn’t be so ready for, or might find a bit unpleasant, and I came up with this F4 line. Actually, Erwin is here, and we even spoke about it a little bit this morning, but very briefly. It’s funny, we also got the same endgame as in his game last year, and I guess the opening choice was at least all right.

I think a big moment was when you had to choose between maybe pushing the pawn or going for Nc6 and the endgame that followed. Or did you not consider pushing the pawn?
– Haha! I think you lost me there. I don’t know. Nc6? Ah, over there, right. Okay. Like, taking the exchange… I could play c4 there, yeah, but I thought then at least he castles. I don’t know. I was tempted by the whole thing that happened in the game, but I don’t know if it was good or not. I haven’t checked with the computer, but at least I won some material. And my rooks were pretty active, so I thought it was at least practical.

You were discussing the game a bit with Magnus afterward. Can you share some of the conclusions you drew?
– Yeah. I think to really draw any conclusions we’d need to discuss for a long time, and it was also such a long game. I think we were both quite tired, but it was very nice of him to even discuss it, because actually he just had a draw if he didn’t play king to H7 but went knight to D5, and he put up such good resistance after being in trouble that I was already kind of resigned to making a draw and I was okay with it. And then suddenly I got this moment out of nowhere and things spiraled out of control again. But yeah, it was a fascinating game and I think he thought so too. That’s why we discussed it a bit.

And we had that fire alarm, of course, in the middle of the night, 1:30 AM. Did you manage to get some sleep afterwards or were you in any way affected by it during the game?
– No, I mean, it wasn’t that late. I went to sleep maybe quarter to one or something. But actually, I think I had just fallen asleep, so I was in some weird mode. When the fire alarm went off, I just woke up in total panic and disorientation. I had no idea where I was, and it was completely pitch black in my room. The sound was so incredibly loud, so I spent a minute looking for the light. Then I went back upstairs when it turned out there was no actual fire, it was a false alarm, but it took a little time to get back to sleep. But I think I fell asleep around 2:30, so I still had about seven hours of sleep, so it wasn’t bad.

Analysis of the game:

Analysis of the round 4 game van Foreest-Carlsen