There were a lot of draws in the Superbet tournament, but one too few for Fabiano Caruana’s liking. In round 5, every game was drawn. In round 6 there was one win - Alireza Firouzja defeated Wesley So. In round 7, five draws; in round 8, five draws, and then in round 9…four draws.
Entering the last round, Caruana led Firouzja, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, and Gukesh Dommaraju by just half a point. Gukesh got nowhere with Black against So and drew quickly and had to hope that Anish Giri would defeat Caruana while Pragg and Firouzja would draw their game.
That’s exactly what happened. Caruana had been undefeated and Giri had been winless, but Giri (with White) played well while Caruana played poorly. That was good news for Gukesh, but the bad news for both Gukesh and Caruana was that despite playing Black Firouzja had a winning endgame against Pragg. Surprisingly, Pragg’s resilience was greater than Firouzja’s technique on the day, and the game finished in a draw.
The result was a four-way tie for first, and therefore a four-way rapid (10’+5”) round-robin playoff for first. The result you’d probably expect, given that Caruana is generally taken to be relatively stronger in classical than in rapid formats together with his possibly nervy performance in the game with Giri, is that one of the youngsters would wind up in first. It didn’t happen, and it was Caruana’s grit and perseverance that carried the day.
In the first round of the tiebreaker, Firouzja wore down Praggnanandhaa in 89 moves; that was the short game in the round. Caruana grimly ground Gukesh in 97 moves to keep pace. In round 2 Gukesh bounced back to defeat his countryman (Pragg) in 61 moves, and in the battle between the two first-round winners it was Caruana once again coming out on top, this time in 78 moves. Caruana was winning, then Firouzja escaped to a difficult but objectively drawn ending, and then Caruana pulled it out anyway.
All four of those games were won by the white pieces, and so was the Firouzja-Gukesh game in round 3, a crush lasting just 35 moves. If Caruana could avoid losing with Black to Praggnanandhaa, he’d win the tournament; if he lost, he (Caruana) would have an Armageddon game with Firouzja. This almost happened. Caruana was in trouble again and again against Praggnanandhaa, but kept dodging bullets. The last critical moment came on move 43. Had Pragg, who was probably very short of time by then, come up with 43.Nxg4 fxg4 44.Ra7!, preventing Caruana from playing 44…Kc4 followed by 45…Kb3 and cleaning out White’s pawns. Unfortunately for Pragg and especially Firouzja, he didn’t do that but played the passive 43.Rh7? Kc4 44.Rh2?, after which he was lost. (Caruana’s next move was inaccurate, but it was still at worst a draw, and in any case Praggnanandhaa returned the favor on the next move, after which Caruana gave him no further opportunity to survive.)
So, while the Giri game was not Caruana’s finest moment, his resilience and skill in the rapid playoff merited his first place and the respect of the chess public to boot. Congratulations to Caruana!
The last round and rapid playoff games are here, with a few comments here and there. Here are the final standings:
1-4. Caruana (His playoff victory granted him an extra $10k, however, all the Grand Chess Tour points were split evenly between the top four.), Firouzja, Praggnanandhaa, Gukesh 5 (out of 9)
5-7. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (4.5 points)
8-9. So, Nodirbek Abdusattorov (4 points)
Bogdan-Daniel Deac (3.5 points)