Season 13 live blogging, Thursday Aug 30th

Today we follow the Jonny - Laser game in round 18. Jonny is currently last with a score of -5, Laser is in 6th place with -2. Almost all of Jonny's losses have been to the two table leaders, and it has one win. If it wins this game it will have a better chance to survive this division. Laser also has only one win so far, it would like to get away from the relegation zone, and this is one of its best chances.

move 10: The engines followed a familiar line in the Sicilian Defense until move 9, where Laser chose an unpopular f5 move. The pawn exchange opened the black g file and both evals jumped. Is this a chance for Jonny?

move 15: The black king is uncastled in the center, trying to get away from the exposed king side. The white king castled long, it is also a little exposed but has some pawn support. Jonny's eval is over 1, always the optimist and not always trustable. Laser had a long 5 minutes think and its eval jumped over 0.7, maybe a real advantage?

move 19: There was a long PV agreement in which Jonny was a pawn down. However, Laser changed its mind on move 18. Its eval went down, Jonny responded with a jump to almost 2 and Laser's eval back over 1. Did Laser blunder? There is a longer PV agreement now showing a white passer on the 7th rank and a RRB vs RBB position.

move 24: BOOM, evals are jumping higher. There are going to be many exchanges in a forced line. Jonny is winning material, the rook cannot escape the pin and Laser can only exchange pieces and delay a little. Jonny seems to be heading for its second win.

move 30: The end of the forced line, now only RRB vs RBB left and Jonny has a pawn on the 7th rank, as was seen in the PV earlier. Jonny continues to be confident, though it probably won't be able to hold its a7 pawn. Laser has a bishop pair, I doubt it is strong enough to hold a draw.

move 38: Another long PV agreement, one pair of rooks is gone and so is the a7 pawn. Evals continue to increase slowly, the win for white seems inevitable.

move 44: A very long think by Jonny, and its eval jumped over 6.5. Laser is slowly getting there, eval over 5.5.

move 49: Game over.

Jonny closes the gap to Laser to only 0.5, there are now three engines in the race against relegation (Booot is the third).