14-year-old Vincent Keymer vs. World Champion Magnus Carlsen

Talk about a baptism of fire! 14-year-old Vincent Keymer has been paired to play World Champion Magnus Carlsen in Round 1 of the GRENKE Chess Classic on Saturday. The good news for the kid? He has White. The bad news? If he survives he then has Black vs. Anand and White vs. Caruana in his next two rounds! Meanwhile the start of the massive GRENKE Chess Open featured an unfortunate incident: 15-year-old Alireza Firouzja forfeited his Round 3 game against Israel’s Or Bronstein rather than get into trouble back in Iran.

Back at the chessboard, meanwhile, there have been few sensations so far, though it was curious that the star player on Board 1 in Rounds 2 and 3 was on each occasion held to a draw – Etienne Bacrot in a 149-move game against German FM Robert Stein, and Gata Kamsky against another German FM, Emil Schmidek.

The big event starts at 15:00 CEST on Saturday 20th April, when Jan Gustafsson will be joined by Peter Leko to commentate on Keymer-Carlsen and all the other games from Round 1 of the GRENKE Chess Classic live here on chess24. Don’t miss it!