Caruana Wins Superbet

Four players were half a point back, but not Ding or Nepo.

The Superbet Classic in Bucharest may not have been the most fighting chess tournament in history, but it had its moments. In the end, the winner was Fabiano Caruana, whose plus-two score sufficed for clear first. Alireza Firouzja won more games - three - but his wins were bookended by losses, and he finished half a point behind. (Still, one bit of consolation is that he is now the #2 player in the world.) Three other players - Wesley So, Richard Rapport, and Anish Giri - were tied with Firouzja, all of whom went undefeated but only won a single game.

Team hyphen - Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave - both won and lost a game to finish tied for 6th-7th with even scores. In last place was Bogdan Deac. He’s a great player in his own right, but he was outclassed in this event. That said, he only finished half a point behind Ian Nepomniachtchi and a point behind Ding Liren, so one shouldn’t exaggerate the degree to which he was an outsider in this field. On the other hand, the poor performance by Nepo and Ding wasn’t much of a surprise, as they must have been emotionally and physically exhausted from the World Championship.

The next super-tournaments are the successors to this one, also in the Grand Chess Tour and also sponsored by Superbet, starting in just a few days. This time it’s rapid and then blitz, in Warsaw. (I’ll try to analyze the highlights from this event before that one begins. Stay tuned.)