A very closely contested World Rapid Championship came to a close on Wednesday, and - surprise! - Magnus Carlsen took clear first. His play throughout the tournament was excellent, and were it not for a single move in his round 11 game against Vladislav Artemiev he might have cruised to tournament victory. That one move, however, completely threw the tournament up for grabs.
But let’s start with round 10. Carlsen had White against Vincent Keymer, the German prodigy and Peter Leko protege who had been the tournament’s Cinderella story. Keymer had looked amazing to that point, but Carlsen showed who was who, looking every bit the world champion as he outplayed his opponent on the way to a smooth victory. It was a nice round for Fabiano Caruana as well, as he outplayed Vladimir Fedoseev an impressive style. And then there was Artemiev, who defeated Arjun Erigaisi in 131 moves. For 129 moves Erigaisi played well enough to draw, but erred on move 130 and resigned after Artemiev’s reply.
This matters because it created the Artemiev-Carlsen pairing, and what looked like a certain draw turned out otherwise when Carlsen blundered material and lost. Carlsen’s tournament lead was gone, and now plenty of players were in the hunt including Artemiev, who was now tied for first; Caruana, whose draw brought him to within half a point of the leaders; and Keymer, who bounced back with another major scalp - Ian Nepomniachtchi. (The kid is good.)
In round 12 Carlsen-Caruana finished in a clean draw, Artemiev almost defeated Fedoseev but had to settle for a draw (and a share of first), and you-know-who - Keymer! - beat Santosh Vidit to make it a three-way tie for first entering the last round.
In the final round, Carlsen got a great pairing: the comparatively low-rated Parham Maghsoodloo (who upset Jan-Krzysztof Duda in round 12), and with White (he had been White against Caruana as well). He crushed him, so it was up to Artemiev and Keymer to keep pace. Unfortunately for Artemiev, his pairing was Black against Caruana, and he didn’t last long. That left Keymer, who had Black against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Keymer played a great game, outplayed MVL, reached a winning endgame…but couldn’t figure out how to jump the final hurdle, and had to settle for a draw. Had he won, I think he would have taken first place, ahead of Carlsen on tiebreaks. As it was, he finished in second, with Caruana taking third - still a fantastic performance.
The concurrent Women’s Rapid Championship was won by Tan Zhongyi on tiebreaks over Dinara Saduakassova; both players scored 8.5/11. Four players finished with 8 points, with Savitha Shri B finished third winning the tiebreak lottery.
The tournament website (for both events) is here, and here once again is a selection of games from day 3, with my comments. The rapid event is over, but no problem: the World Blitz Championship takes its place over the next two days.
Tiebreaks wouldn't matter as there would have been a blitz playoff for first place - it was the case in the women event. They would matter if more than two players share first place: while all players in shared first place would enter the playoff (change from earlier events in the open section, oddly apparently not for the women section), higher-ranked players on tiebreak get certain privileges: possible "bye" in the early stage and the playoff would be single blitz games (additional ones with colors reversed only in case of draws) with the higher-ranked player getting white. For other places, tiebreaks didn't matter financially as prize money was shared equally between tied players.
That being said as Dennis is curious: Yes, Keymer would have kept his Buchholz edge over Carlsen - reduced from 102.5-100 to 102-100.5: Keymer would get half a Buchholz point less for his game against Vachier-Lagrave, Carlsen (who didn't face MVL) would get half a point more for his game against Keymer.
The main reason for Keymer's tiebreak edge seems to be that Carlsen had two opponents who sort of collapsed after losing against the Norwegian: Jorden van Foreest had 4.5/5 before facing Carlsen to finish on 7/13. At the end of day 2, Carlsen played Quparadze - overperforming until then but unable to keep it up on day 3. BTW this easy pairing for Carlsen was thanks to Jorden van Foreest, who had lost with white against Quparadze in just 19 moves the round before. So Carlsen was somewhat lucky with his pairings at key moments.
Regarding the quick draw between Dubov and Fedoseev in the last round: Yes, the winner would have gotten a medal (Dubov apparently silver just ahead of Keymer on the second tiebreak, Fedoseev bronze), but financially spoken the loser would lose quite something with an about even risk-benefit calculation. Prize money for 2nd-4th place (shared equally) would have been 40,000$, for 4th-8th place it was 21,800$, for 9th-22nd place it was about 5,000$.
Considering their situation cautiousness is understandable? An unethical "someone wins and we then share the money" (which can never be proven, nor disproven) wouldn't have yielded much extra. It would have been a different situation, and possibly a full fight with or without prior agreements, if both had half a point less going into the final round.
Their situation: not quite world-top so few supertournament invitations. And organizers might generally boycot Russians - while both spoke up against the war and Fedoseev moved to Spain.
Maghsoodloo may have considered his game against Carlsen must-win with black (of course no guarantee that he would have drawn with solid play), while a win would have left him off the podium due to his poor Buchholz score. Dubov and Fedossev also already have world rapid champpionship medals: Dubov gold in 2018, Fedoseev silver in 2017.