Ivory gates

This year’s Grand Chess Tour kicked off in the Ivory Coast with a significant innovation, the first ever tournament in Africa involving a reigning world champion. Magnus Carlsen duly triumphed in the overall scores of a combined rapid and blitz event. The champion, however, did not have it all his own way. Carlsen easily won the rapid section but suffered a scare in the blitz when Maxime Vachier-Lagrave twice defeated the champion and won a barely credible eight games in a row. This remarkable parade was, though, insufficient to jeopardise Carlsen’s victory, since his lead from the rapid section was too vast to overcome.
 
The scores out of a possible 36 were as follows: Magnus Carlsen 26½, Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 23, Wesley So 19½, Ding Liren 18½, Wei Yi 16½, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Sergey Karjakin 15½, Veselin Topalov 11½, Amin Bassem 10½. Here are some highlights.
 
Carlsen–So: Rapidplay, Abidjan 2019 (see diagram 1)
 
A notable feature of Carlsen’s recent play is his willingness to make speculative sacrifices of a pawn.