It was a great last day at the Tata Steel Masters. Five players entered the last round tied for first - Anish Giri, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Dommaraju Gukesh, Wei Yi, and Santosh Vidit Gujrathi - with two more players - Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and Alireza Firouzja - half a point behind. In theory, six players could have tied for first - the five leaders and the winner, if any, of the Pragg-Firouzja game.
It wasn’t likely that all the leaders would draw their games, of course, especially since Giri and Abdusattorov were heavy favorites in their games, having White against lower-rated opponents having poor results. Assuming that at least one leader would win, the largest logjam would be a four-way tie for first. (A five-way tie with all the leaders winning would be impossible, as Wei Yi and Vidit were paired with each other.)
And that is what happened, leading to a four-man playoff.
The two big favorites mentioned above won as expected, but neither won cleanly. Abdusattorov had a couple of big opportunities early on against Alexander Donchenko, but some errors gave Donchenko a chance for a big advantage. Eventually the game turned back in Abdusattorov’s favor, but Donchenko had one last chance to equalize on the final move of the time control. He missed his chance, and White went on to win.
Similarly, Giri was winning from the jump against Max Warmerdam, and - similarly - he let Warmerdam off the hook. Still, the underdog’s position was not easy to handle, and Giri soon won anyway.
Gukesh had Black against Parham Maghsoodloo. The bad news is that Maghsoodloo is a player of the same level and had the white pieces; the good news is that Maghsoodloo, true to his style and approach to the game, had no intention of playing it safe. Whatever else might happen, it wouldn’t be a boring non-game. The position was wild, and on move 16 Maghsoodloo played the wild, unnecessary, and bad 16.Nxf7. White could have had a crazy position for free, and while this might have raised the insanity a notch it gave Black an objectively winning position. Gukesh slipped once, on move 29, but Maghsoodloo erred in turn, missing his chance to equalize, and Black reaped the full point just after the time control.
Finally, Wei Yi triumphed over Vidit, using, of all things, the Colle System. Not the Zukertort, but the actual Colle in all its not-so-glorious insipidity. And yet, it worked, as did many of Wei Yi’s opening experiments in this tournament. The Colle hasn’t been even a sort-of big deal in something like 90 years, and Vidit was probably as confused by the sight of it as the participants in a philosophy class would be by seeing someone dressed like Socrates enter the seminar room. But this relic from the Great Depression (I guess they couldn’t afford good openings in those days?) proved effective, as Vidit couldn’t remember or figure out the best way to meet it. As a result, everything went as smoothly as possible for White, achieving a clear advantage by move 13 and a winning position by move 18. Black lasted until move 38, but once he was lost he stayed lost. It was the culmination of an amazing finish for Wei Yi, who scored 4.5 points in his last five games.
We’ll get to the Abdusattorov-Giri-Gukesh-Wei Yi tiebreak momentarily, but first a word about the other three games. Praggnanandhaa pressed hard against Firouzja and forced his opponent to make a number of only-moves to survive - and he did. Had Pragg won, he would have finished the event as the highest-rated Indian player, ahead of Anand. Earlier in the event, he had passed Anand on the live rating list, and later and until the last round Vidit had nosed in front. In the end, Anand still holds to a tenuous lead, just ahead of a host of Indian super-talents:
Anand 2748 (#12 in the world)
Praggnanandhaa 2747.4 (#13 in the world; his rating will be rounded down to 2747 at the end of the month)
Vidit 2746.5 (#14; it will be rounded up to 2747)
Gukesh 2742.7 (#16)
Arjun Erigaisi 2738 (#18)
Indian chess is going gangbusters, and we shouldn’t forget that Pentala Harikrishna is still over 2700 (2707.6, #32). Their team will be among the favorite at this year’s Olympiad this September in Budapest.
Back to the event. While Ding Liren was happy to play on yesterday against Max Warmerdam with Black, today he showed no interest in trying to beat his countrywoman, Ju Wenjun, with White, and an almost immediately uninteresting game was drawn after 30 moves. Ian Nepomniachtchi vs. Jorden Van Foreest was only very slightly more interesting, and the players called it a day only one half-move later than Ding and Ju.
Here are the not-quite-final final standings:
1-4. Gukesh, Giri, Abdusattorov, Wei Yi 8.5 (of 13)
5-7. Vidit, Firouzja, Praggnanandhaa 7.5
Nepomniachtchi 6.5
Ding Liren 6
10-13. Ju Wenjun, Donchenko, Van Foreest, Maghsoodloo 4.5
Warmerdam 4
And now, to the playoff.
The winner would be the winner of a pair of two-game knockout matches played with a 3’ + 2” time control. Abdusattorov vs. Wei Yi was one semi-final, Giri vs. Gukesh was the other.
Abdusattorov was winning the first game against Wei Yi, with Black, but 51…Qxc1?? allowed White to escape an otherwise dead lost position with a perpetual check. In the second game it was Abdusattorov who twice escaped from a lost position, but the third time he didn’t manage to escape, and that was it.
In the other match, Giri was in big trouble with Black in the first game, but when the players were playing desperately off the increment Gukesh first missed a win and then a draw in consecutive moves, and wound up with a loss. That meant that Gukesh had to win on demand in the second game, with Black, and he did it, winning an excellent game.
That meant not Armageddon, but a sudden death format. White starts with two and a half minutes to Black’s three - still with a two-second increment, and the winner wins the match. If the game is drawn, the players switch colors and do it all over again, etc., until someone wins a game. It ended in one game, as Gukesh played another excellent game, this time with White, breaking through on the queenside before Giri’s kingside play could get going.
The final between Gukesh and Wei Yi followed the same format. Gukesh had the white pieces in the first game, and the game was soon headed for a draw. Gukesh seemed fine with that result, but Wei Yi kept trying to make something happen - and he almost did. A blunder on move 43 could have cost him the game in what was a routinely drawn rook ending, and while that error went unpunished a further error on move 46 could have left him with a miserable (but not necessarily fatal) defensive task. Gukesh missed both opportunities, and the game was finally drawn.
Game 2 also had saw Gukesh get - and fail to capitalize on - another opportunity to enjoy a big advantage. After the missed chance it was generally Wei Yi who had the upper hand, and while he slipped up from time to time as well, it was ultimately Gukesh who made the final error in time trouble, and lost.
And so, improbably, Wei Yi won the tournament. He was at 50% after eight rounds, but his run of 4.5/5 at the end of the classical tournament and resilience and high tolerance for risk in the playoffs made the difference. It’s also a big moment in his career. For the second time in his life, he has reached #9 in the world, and has done so while hitting a career rating high of 2754.8 (2755 once it’s rounded up at the end of the month). He exploded onto the world stage in 2013, when he became the then-youngest player in history to achieve a 2600 rating (aged 14 years, four months and 30 days); and in early 2015, a little more than 15 and a half years old, he passed the 2700 barrier. This is (I think) still the record. Despite these extraordinary accomplishments at such an early age, he seems to have stagnated. Hopefully this success marks the beginning of a new series of peaks for this great talent, now 24 years old.
It was an excellent event for all seven players on the top half of the table. In the bottom half, Ju Wenjun accredited herself well, and Donchenko’s result wasn’t so bad, either. Warmerdam’s performance rating wasn’t so bad, only a bit below his rating, but the missed opportunities and five straight losses after a 4-4 score would have left most people with a bad taste in their mouths. Hopefully he can view this as a great learning experience and come back stronger.
And with that - and with the games, which I’ve annotated here - my coverage of the Masters’ event is at an end. Hope you enjoyed it; stay tuned for some different chess content in the next day or two.