When I started blogging back in 2005, there was a gap between super-tournaments, sometimes a fairly lengthy gap. By the start of the COVID, there was almost no gap. Then we had players in the Candidates - including those in the race for first - playing Titled Tuesdays during the rest day. (It’s only the World Championship at stake; who cares about that when one can play for a $1,000 first place in an hours-long blitz event?)
The latest evolution: different tournaments hold their rounds on the same days, with the same players in both tournaments. (The only way to top this, I guess, is to have the games be simultaneous as well, rather than having the first tournament’s games start at one time and the other’s a sufficient number of hours later.) That’s what we’ve got with the Superbet Rapid & Blitz in Warsaw, Poland and the Chess.com “Classic” in cyberspace. The overlap isn’t complete, but (at least) Magnus Carlsen, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, and Vincent Keymer are playing in both events at the same time.
Let’s review Superbet first. It’s a ten player, two stage event. First they play a rapid round-robin with the games counting double, then they’ll play a double round-robin in blitz with the games counting in the usual way. After two days of the rapid, Magnus Carlsen (no surprise) and Wei Yi (some surprise) are tied for first with 8/12 (= 4/6 on normal scoring), a point ahead of Kirill Shevchenko and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.
The first day was a big surprise as bottom seed Shevchenko won all three games (against Dommaraju Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, and Vincent Keymer, respectively) - many of us would be tempted to end our careers at that point and ride off into the sunset. While Shevchenko won the first and third games thanks to gifts, he showed that he wasn’t some sort of chessic Mr. Magoo and drew with Carlsen in round 4. Reality made an appearance in round 5 & 6 though, as he lost to Arjun Erigaisi and then Wei Yi. Still, he’s in good shape with 7 points. Carlsen has gone undefeated so far, with wins against Wei Yi and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and nearly winning a spectacular game against Gukesh in round 6. As for Wei Yi, he was winless on day 1 (and lost the game to Carlsen) but went 3-0 (or rather, 6-0 on the scoring system) on day 2 with wins against Anish Giri, Duda, and Shevchenko.
Now to the Chess.com tournament and its complicated multi-stage format. Yesterday (May 8) it began with a Play-In tournament. 69 players emerged from that event to reach today’s Division Placement matches. There are three divisions, with Division 1 the brass ring which includes three pre-seeded players: Magnus Carlsen, Alireza Firouzja, and Vincent Keymer. (I believe there’s a fourth pre-seeded player, but that’s the winner of the previous Champions Chess Tour tournament’s Division 3 winner, playing in Division 2 this time.) We’re just going to focus on today’s matches for those trying to reach Division 1 (match losers were relegated to Division 2); this is what happened:
Velimir Ivic defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2-1 (MVL won game 1, lost game 2 on a mouse slip IIRC, and then lost the Armageddon game)
Jan-Krzysztof Duda beat Daniil Dubov 2-0
Wesley So beat Dmitrij Kollars 2-0
Sam Sevian defeated Leinier Dominguez 1.5-0.5 in a slight upset
Andrey Esipenko beat Matthias Bluebaum 1.5-0.5
The top finishers from the Play-In tournament had a bye and were able to skip the first round of Division Placement matches. They entered the second round, and mostly had trouble, including Play-In winner Fabiano Caruana:
Alexey Sarana 3 - Wesley So 2 (So was in trouble throughout but kept miraculously surviving. The four regular games were drawn, and then Sarana won in Armageddon.)
Ivic 2.5 - Caruana 1.5 (Ivic won game 1, lost game 2, and promptly won game 3 and drew the finale; spoiler alert: his reward for playing and beating MVL and Caruana is to get Carlsen tomorrow…brutal pairings)
Duda 2.5 - Levon Aronian .5
Ian Nepomniachtchi 2.5 - Sevian 1.5 (Nepo was fortunate to win the match. After a draw, Sevian won game 2, and after Nepo struck back in game 3 Sevian was winning game 4 before blundering to a loss.)
Denis Lazavik 3 - Andrey Esipenko 2 (As in Sarana-So, there were four draws before the match was decided - in both cases with a white win - in Armageddon.)
All that winnowing has the Division 1 part of the event down to its final 8, where - if memory serves - they will fight it out in the now-usual double elimination format. (Readers: If there is a place that explains the rules clearly, please send me a link. My attempts to find something useful on the Chess.com website have been in vain.) We’ve got the following matches to look forward to tomorrow:
Carlsen - Ivic
Lazavik - Nepomniachtchi
Firouzja - Duda
Keymer - Sarana
I’m less inclined to cover the Chess.com event’s games, but here are links to their video coverage of yesterday’s and today’s action, and here’s their landing page for the Champions Chess Tour. As for Superbet (see also here), I may present some games later.