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Firouzja wins, Duda escapes
The most important result of round 3 was Pentala Harikrishna’s win with black over former sole leader Nils Grandelius. However, we also saw Jan-Krzysztof Duda barely escaping in a double-edged struggle against Fabiano Caruana, and Alireza Firouzja showing impressive endgame technique to get his first victory of the event.
Special: AVRO 1938. All in One : Anish Giri and Igor Stohl dissect two topical opening lines. Analyses from Norway Chess 2020 by Duda, Firouzja et al. Videos by Erwin l Ami, Daniel King and Mihail Marin. 11 opening articles and much more!
Due to Harikrishna’s victory, five players are now sharing the lead on +1 besides the Indian, Grandelius, Caruana, Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri have also collected 2 points so far in the tournament.
Pentala Harikrishna, Poland s no. 2
Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Sweden s no. 1
Nils Grandelius are excellent replacements.
Then, on the eve of the tournament, Daniil Dubov was also forced to cancel after someone close to him tested positive for COVID-19. His late replacement is 22-year-old German Grandmaster
Carlsen has won the Masters group of the event a record 7 times since 2008, when he shared 1st along with Levon Aronian. Caruana is the reigning champion and in fact only three other players (Levon Aronian in 2012 and 2014, Hikaru Nakamura in 2011 and Wesley So in 2017) have managed to win the event in the last 10 years.
Whether Carlsen can triumph again may depend on whether he recovers his form from earlier in 2020. The 30-year-old had an immensely successful year, winning a total of 9 online events and one over-the-board event (Norway Chess), but Wesley So crashed his 30th birthday party by winning the Skilling Open final, while his Airthings Masters came to an end in
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Paul Keres at the Chess Olympiad 1954 in Amsterdam
The XI. Chess Olympiad was played in Amsterdam, from September 4 to September 25. After Dubrovnik in 1950 and Helsinki in 1952, it was the third Chess Olympiad after the war and the second post-war Olympiad in which the Soviet Union participated. In Dubrovnik, the Soviets had renounced possible Olympic glory, but in Helsinki in 1952 they took part and won their first gold medal. This was also the start of a new era, and until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Soviet teams won gold in all but one of the following Olympiads in which they started – only in Buenos Aires 1978 they finished second behind Hungary.