My short hiatus came midway through the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz, which finished in a narrow victory for Magnus Carlsen. Several players were hotter than he was on this day or that, and he won neither the rapid nor the blitz portion. It was his overall consistency across the five days of the tournament that made the difference. He lost his last two games, on the final day of the blitz portion of the tournament, but still eked out overall victory, finishing half a point ahead of les français Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, both of whom played the final day as if they were shot out of a cannon. Firouzja scored 7.5/9, only losing (very unnecessarily) to MVL, while MVL blew the doors down with 8/9. Carlsen’s overall score was 22.5/36, with Firouzja and MVL at 22.
Wesley So was a further point back, and would have contended for first were it not for his collapse at the very end, scoring just half a point from his last three games. Ian Nepomniachtchi was also tied with So at 21 points. Jorden Van Foreest had many high points in the tournament, but too many defeats left him a further two points behind with 19/36. The rest of the field was far behind, with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Leinier Dominguez at 15, Veselin Topalov at 12, and Ivan Saric in last with 10.5 - though he did beat Carlsen in the very last round.
Before moving on to the next event, here’s Garry Kasparov, on the last day of the event, offering his opinions about the status of the world championship title, and then commentating on the blitz game between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi:
On now to Biel, which was apparently designed to be confusing. Eight players were invited to the top group, and they would battle at four different “kinds” of chess. First, there was a Chess960 competition which didn’t count for the overall standings. This single round-robin saw Vincent Keymer and Nodirbek Abdusattorov finish tied for first with 5/7, half a point ahead of Le Quang Liem.
Then it was on to the “real” event, a so-called triathlon. First, a rapid round-robin. Then, the first three rounds of classical chess, followed by a blitz double-round robin over the next two days, and then the last four rounds of the classical chess round-robin. Don’t worry, it will get more confusing: the scoring system for the classical games was 4-1.5-0, so although Andrey Esipenko and Le tied for first on normal scoring, each going 4.5/7, Le finished with two extra points as he won four games, lost two and drew one while Esipenko scored an undefeated +2.
They also finished 1-2 in the rapid games, but unfortunately for Esipenko there was no bonus there for decisive games, so his +5 -2 was worth a point less than Le’s +4 =3 on the 2-1-0 scoring system used for the rapid.
Finally, neither Le nor Esipenko shone in the blitz portion, which was won by Gata Kamsky with 8.5/14, half a point ahead of Keymer, AR Salem, and Abdusattorov. Still, their 7 points apiece kept them from losing much of the ground they had gained, and so they still finished in first and second overall. Here are the final standings:
Le 35.5 (of a possible 56)
Esipenko 32.5
Gukesh 29.5
Abdusattorov 26.5
Salem 26
Kamsky 23.5
Naiditsch 20.5
Keymer 19
The remarkable thing about all of this is that in the last round, which, as noted above, was a classical round, the key pairing was Esipenko vs. Le. The game finished in a draw, but Esipenko was very close to winning. Had he managed to do so, he would have finished ahead of Le, with 35 points to his rival’s 34. So let’s take a look at this game, along with the two Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi blitz games, here.