Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi, Game 8: Nepo Blunders, Goes Two Down

The match isn't over, but Magnus Carlsen may have gotten his first glimpse of the finishing line. The players both seem to be very tired - Carlsen is, by his own admission, and it's not a difficult inference to make about Ian Nepomniachtchi's condition, either - and perhaps the difference in today's game was that Carlsen was more aware of his limitations and made the right adjustments, while Nepo didn't.

Carlsen returned to 1.e4 and Nepo repeated the Petroff. Carlsen varied from game 4 with 3.d4, and played an extremely innocuous line. It was quickly clear that he was fine with a draw, though he would play on given a chance. The challenger, by contrast, played very enterprising chess. Maybe he didn't break the bounds of acceptable risk, but he was doing what he could to unbalance the position. Carlsen's reaction wasn't to play for the maximum, but to keep control. And then, out of nowhere, Nepomniachtchi blundered - really blundered (in contrast with the exaggerated sense of that term that's now commonplace, when a grandmaster reports "blundering" some minor point on the 15th move of a variation, where that word is incorrectly used as a synonym for "overlooked"). He lost an important pawn to a two-move idea, with the longest relevant variation going only one move further. (And these were all obvious moves, too.)

Nepo didn't put up the best defense afterwards, either, and Carlsen showed good if not especially crisp technique to finish the game in the second time control. He now leads the best-of-14 game match 5-3, and as he has only lost a grand total of two games in his four and a half world championship matches, the challenger's chances are almost negligible, especially now that Carlsen will play with an extra layer of caution. But we'll see, and Nepo has a rest day to lick his wounds, regain his strength, and find a promising line for his next white game.

Here's round 8, with my notes. For those who need a chess fix tomorrow, recall that there will be Speed Chess Championship matches between Ding Liren and Levon Aronian, and between Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri, tomorrow.