World Rapid Championships, Days 2 & 3

Murzin, Koneru win.

Let one guy win the World Championship when he’s 18, and then every 18-year-old thinks he can do it! In the case of Volodar Murzin, he’s right. The young Russian was the 59th seed out of 180 players, but it didn’t matter. He finished in clear first with 10/13, half a point ahead of Alexander Grischuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi (second and third respectively, on tiebreak), and along the way defeated Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu while making draws against Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez, Arjun Erigaisi, Anish Giri, and Alexander Grischuk - just to pick the highlights. He went undefeated and generally stayed out of trouble. Still, when he had to scrap he did, most remarkably in his game against Pragg in the penultimate round. (Had it gone the other way, Pragg probably would have won the title, giving India its 354th success this year.) All in all it was a tremendous performance, and it’s surprising that he “only” gained 49.5 points. His 2881 performance rating was more than 100 points greater than the next highest performance, which was Erigaisi’s 2773. It was a brilliant tournament for the youngster, and hopefully he can maintain his form for the blitz, which starts tomorrow.

It was a Russian sweep, and a fourth Russian, Daniil Dubov, was in the group half a point behind Grischuk and Nepo. Russian chess has been overshadowed in recent years by India, the U.S., China, and even Uzbekistan, but this was a reminder that they haven’t gone away. The U.S. contingent was large and started strong, and while both Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana trailed a bit in the early going, plenty of other Americans made up the slack while our top two players caught up. Dominguez was always in the leading group and was among the players who went through the event undefeated. He finished fourth, on tiebreaks, and it’s surprising that he agreed to a quick draw with White against Grischuk in the last round in a theoretical position with all 32 units still on the board. Another American player worth mentioning - and there were plenty - was Daniel Naroditsky, who enjoyed the sole leadership of the tournament after round 7. He cooled off in the second half of the event, finishing with 7.5 points, but look for him to have more sustained success in the blitz. Four Americans finished in the group with 8.5 points, including Sam Sevian (with a 2760 TPR!), Caruana, Ray Robson, and Hans Niemann - who defeated Nakamura in the last round.

Let’s turn to the Women’s event. When we left off at the end of day 1 15-year-old American IM Alice Lee was the clear leader with 4/4. Unfortunately for her, her next opponent was World Champion Ju Wenjun. Lee played very well for a long time, but finally made the one mistake the champ needed to triumph. Lee wasn’t able to stay with the leaders, unfortunately, but as she’s only 15 she’ll be increasingly scary to the rest of the field for years to come.

As for the champ, she soon took over the lead and looked likely to win. She fell into a drawing rut, though, and going into the last round seven(!) players were tied for first: Jun Wenjun, Tan Zhongyi, Harika Dronavalli, Kateryan Lagno, Humpy Koneru, Irine Sukandar, and Afruza Khamdamova. Initially the commentators (and your humble scribe) were dreaming of a seven-or-more way playoff (a maximum of nine players could have tied for first, finishing with 8/11 [the women’s event was two rounds shorter for some reason]), but then a check of the rules revealed that no matter how many players tied for first, only the two with the best tiebreaks would go through to a playoff.

You might think that this would motivate the players with inferior tiebreaks to fight harder. That’s what I would have thought, too; turns out we’re all wrong. Three of the four games involving the leaders were quick draws, leaving Sukandar and Humpy to fight it out for first. Humpy did her best Carlsen impression and kept grinding away in a slightly better (practically speaking) but objectively equal rook ending. Sukandar’s defense was often good but interspersed with the occasional inaccuracy, and her task gradually became more difficult. In the end, a serious misjudgment cost her the game, and Humpy was the deserved victory of the tournament with 8.5 points out of 11, with Ju and Lagno taking second and third on tiebreaks ahead of four other players in their score group, half a point behind.

Here are a bunch of games from days 2 and 3, from both the open and the women’s sections. I probably won’t annotate any games from day 1 of the blitz, which starts tomorrow, but might present some games from day 2.

“Why?”, you might reasonably wonder, if you’ve been following the World Blitz Championships for the past however many years. The answer is that there’s a new format. Tomorrow they’ll have a 13-round Swiss, but it won’t continue in day 2. Instead, the top eight will face off in a series of best-of-four knockout matches. It could be interesting, and while I don’t know if it’s an improvement on the old method it might be more pleasant for the players who are quickly out of the running. We’ll see.