As the World Champion-ship Candidates Tourna-ment continued, Russia’s number one chess player Ian Nepomniachtchi defeated his countryman Kirill Alekseenko in 31 moves in a Catalan setup with a fianchettoed king’s bishop in Round 10, which was played on Wednesday last.
Analysts of the game say Alekseenko was outplayed in the opening and experienced difficulties finding a safe haven for his powerful queen. I replayed the game and the sentiment expressed seems to be accurate.
According to chess writer Carlos Alberto Colodro, World Champion Magnus Carlsen commented on the game. He said there were other lines which were less problematic for Black (Alekseenko) than the one which was played. And to compound the 
problem, Black was experiencing time trouble during the game.
Nepomniachtchi was in the lead and American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana was one of the three chasers in the tournament at the end of Round 10, the others being Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France, and Anish Giri of the Netherlands.
In another match which was played last Monday, Caruana defeated Vachier-Lagrave in a Najdorf Sicilian. Playing the white pieces, Caruana found an unusual king bishop sacrifice in the centre of the chess board which led to serious complications for black. Eventually, Black failed to hold the position together and resigned on the 74th move.
Eight players are contesting the Candidates Tournament: three from Russia, two from China, one from USA, one from France and one from the Netherlands. At the end of it, on Wednesday April 28 if there are tie-breaks, one of them will have won the opportunity to face the Norwegian Carlsen for the world championship title.
Alongside the Candidates Tournament, when he was finished commenting on the games, Carlsen played 22 of the most promising junior chess players worldwide simultaneously in a three-minute blitz. He won 19.5 to 2.5. He lost to Indian chess prodigy Nihal Sarin, Awonder Liang of the USA and drew with Vincent Keymer of Germany.
