Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Humpy Koneru of India have been crowned as the men’s and women’s world rapid chess champions respectively in Moscow.
Carlsen, regained the title he won in 2014 and 2015, comfortably undefeated, with eight wins, and seven draws.
As for Humpy, she won her first title in contrasting style. She took the title in Armageddon playoff against China’s Lei Tingjie after both grandmasters finished level on points.
Carlsen had set off on his path to victory with three wins and three draws on the first day. He accelerated on the second day with four wins and two draws. The third and final day of the Open Rapid tournament was a day of reckoning, where certainty shattered hopes of the chasing back in turning the tables on the best player in the world.
After getting in the pole position at the end of the second day, with 8 points out of a possible 10, half a point above the rest, Carlsen continued to improve and tightened his grip on the top spot.
It wasn’t completely spotless for Carlsen, but it was more than enough. In his first match of the day, he drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Although managing to secure a better position, Carlsen missed a win when he went for a queen exchange. The situation on the board developed into a rook vs rook endgame, which did not give the Norwegian sufficient advantage to secure a victory over his French opponent.
In the next round, Carlsen was White against Levon Aronian. In a tense endgame with queens, Aronian overlooked his strongest piece and lost. This was the moment when Carlsen increased his lead over everybody else to a whole point. A critical resource for the remaining three rounds.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was next to follow. Until playing Carlsen, Mamedyarov was on six victories, five draws and had only one loss (to Vachier-Lagrave). His performance seemed confident, but all that confidence disappeared in the game against Carlsen where the Azeri GM played a line unnatural to his style and quickly lost.
The Norwegian was now already a point and a half ahead of the others. A fast-paced game followed where Carlsen agreed to a draw with Leinier Dominguez Perez. Having finished this round first among the top boards, he was instantly now two points above everyone before the final game, which meant that if anyone wanted to catch him, they had to win in the 14th round. The only two grandmasters to achieve that were Vladimir Artemiev, who defeated Vachier-Lagrave, and Hikaru Nakamura, who bettered Illya Smirin.
Artemiev and Nakamura were now the only two players who had slim chances of overtaking Carlsen. The key was in Nakamura’s hands – if he beat Carlsen, both would be on 11 points meaning there would be a playoff. Either because of being tired or thinking it was pointless to expect a victorious outcome over the Norwegian who was at the top of his game, Nakamura went for a quick draw after 22 moves, leaving Magnus to claim the title of the Rapid World Champion.
Alireza Firouzja, who recently left the Iranian Chess Federation and participated in the tournament under the FIDE flag, emerged second defeating Mamedyarov in the final round and finishing on 10.5/15.
In the final standings table he was ranked first among those sharing second to fourth place. The remaining two were Hikaru Nakamura and Vladimir Artemiev, all on 10.5/15.
Great turnarounds in competitions often happen when one side performs better than its opponent. Sometimes, however, changes happen not due to someone’s brilliance but rather because of their opponent’s oversight. This seemed to be the case in many of the games on the final day of the Women’s chess rapid.
After two days and eight rounds of play, there were four players sharing the first place, with 6.5/8: Irina Bulmaga, Tan Zhongyi, Lei Tingjie, and Mariya Muzychuk. The second tier, with 6/8 was made up of Humpy Koneru, Olga Girya, Kateryna Lagno, Harika Dronavalli, Ekaterina Atalik, and Anna Muzychuk.
Several of the key games on the final day were decided thanks to the blunders of players who were in significantly better positions.
Round Nine began with a Chinese-derby, where Tingjie was white against Tan Zhongyi. This turned out to be the key game of Tingjie’s path to the top in the Rapid. Zhongyi achieved a significantly better position but then got into time pressure which led to her first losing the advantage and then, in a drawn position, overlooking a bishop and losing. Tingjie joined Irina Bulmaga at the top after the match.
In the next round, Tingjie secured a comfortable position against Anna Muzychuk and was slightly better in a queen and rook vs queen and rook endgame. But then a turnaround happened – Tingjie overlooked a loose pawn on the b-file while Anna secured her advanced pawn on c3. It was now Tingjie’s turn to play catch-up and fight to save the position while having to deal with about 20 seconds remaining on her clock. The game ended with a draw.
The final round of the women’s rapid started with Tingjie alone at the top with 9/11, followed by Zhongyi on 8.5 and no fewer than five players on eight points.
Ekaterina Atalik sprang to board one for the final round, to face Tingjie’. Atalik quickly secured a piece up in the opening and was poised to win, which would have been a major upset on the scoreboard.
After a blunder by Tingjie, Atalik managed to win a bishop in the opening, but the compensation was at the risk of having her queen trapped behind black lines. Atalik simplified – she sacrificed a knight to end with two-pawns up and a winning position with White.
She then missed a chance to win. While this drama was unfolding on the top board, things were heating up on board two between Humpy and Zhongyi.
With both players having a couple of seconds on their clock, Zhongyi offered a draw to Humpy who immediately refused. A few seconds later, under time pressure, Zhongyi blundered and lost.
Atalik immediately looked over to see what had happened. She knew that she had to try everything to squeeze a victory against Tingjie. Eventually, she got there, the Chinese player lost her final game although she needed a draw to be first, while Humpy – who managed to win in the last two rounds – sprang to the top.
The result meant that three players were now tied for the top place – Tingjie, Humpy, and Atalik. Atalk missed out on the playoff and had to settle for thord place.
The tie-break of two blitz games was set between the Humpy and Tingjie. The match included two games played with a time control of 3 minutes + 2 seconds increment per move, starting from move 1. There was a drawing of lots to decide which player starts with white pieces.
Humpy lost the first game with white but managed to recover in the second after Tingjie made an oversight. The final decision was made in the “Armageddon” – the sudden death game – in which Humpy was better of the two.
Humpy Koneru said that the result was beyond her expectations from the day.
“When I started my first game on Day Three I did not imagine I would be at the top. My hope was to reach the top three. I didn’t expect to play the tie-break games. I lost the first game on time, but came back in the second game. It was a gambling game, but I won. In the final game, a better position and it was a comfortable win.”
Regardless of the fact that she did not win the tournament, the hero of the Women’s Rapid was Irina Bulmaga. With 2383 rating points she was ranked 24th in the players’ list, but her performance was much better, showing that her ELO is more a reflection of a lack of top tournaments than her actual strength.
Bulmaga started well, winning all four games on the first day and becoming one of the leaders. She slowed down in the second day, with three draws but a critical win against none-other than Humpy.
Bulmaga’s performance on the second day (with 6.5 points altogether) was sufficient to keep her in the top position after eight rounds. Bulmaga continued to play confidently on the third day, setting off with a victory against Mariya Muzychuk.
She was leading until round ten, but then her luck ran out: she suffered her first defeat at the hands of Olga Girya. In the next, 11th Round, Bulmaga played against Atalik (with whom she prepared for this tournament) and opted for a quick draw.
The outcome of other top games in that round meant that Bulmaga was half a point behind the second-placed and a whole point behind the first placed player. In the final round, she lost to Natalija Pogonina and finished ninth on 8/12.
About Post Author
