MVL constantly seems to forget theory in this tournament, but not always to his disadvantage. He got away with it against Karjakin and now he even manages to score the full point with black against Nepo, who produces high variance for a reason.

Btw, am I the only one who has a problem with Rabiega’s commentary at chess24? He certainly calculates better than the average FM, but he acts like he is totally clueless about modern theory. This feels kinda familiar to me, because I remember such guys from the Oberliga. Well, this is probably typical for a veteran west-german GM, because there was no chess education. They just played chess in clubs and in tournaments. 100% learning by doing. Last night they mentioned Christopher Lutz, who made an impact on the german scene with his strong engine preparation. The funny thing is that Rabiega connects his decline with his time-out from chess. He missed a few easy engine-victories, but what he missed most is the bus. His approach to chess is simply outdated.

In the old days in order to become a strong player you had to have the talent and you had to be critical towards published theory. Then came the engines and all of a sudden everyone had access to the “truth”. Clearly the “truth” back then was relative to the strength of the engines, but it was clearly better than the Fake News that you got from published theory. Veterans who were too slow to make the transition got killed over the board. Nowadays everyone is working with strong engines, so you got to do your homework before you are even allowed to show your talent. The key is not to know what everyone knows, but to know what nobody else knows. It’s similar to Leko’s approach and slightly paranoid.