Khanty-Mansiysk Grand Prix, The End: Caruana, Nakamura and Jakovenko Tie For First, and the First Two Are Now Candidates
Five of the six games were drawn today, with only Peter Svidler managing a win (against Baadur Jobava). As a result, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and Dmitry Jakovenko tied for first in the Khanty-Mansiysk Grand Prix tournament. More importantly, Caruana and Nakamura finished 1-2 in the overall Grand Prix standings, and thereby qualified for next year's Candidates' event.
(Viswanathan Anand had already qualified by virtue of his loss in the last world championship match, while the other five candidates have yet to be determined. Two will qualify from the World Cup [starting September 10], two will qualify by rating, and one will qualify on whatever basis the organizers see fit. Hopefully it will go to the person who was closest overall to qualifying in one of the other ways, but there's a non-trivial chance that it will go to the strongest available representative of the host country.)
As for the final round action, two games were crucial: Anish Giri vs. Caruana and Nakamura vs. Jakovenko. Caruana had a small disadvantage in the middlegame, but it disappeared when Giri went for the ebullient plan of g4-g5. Caruana was soon better, and it was only the sufficiency of taking a draw that prevented him from making Giri suffer for several hours. Meanwhile, Jakovenko needed a win to take sole first and to qualify for the Candidates' rather than his opponent. He managed to get a very small advantage, but it never became anything tangible. Whatever small chances he had departed with the last set of rooks, as 26...Rxf2 led to a queen ending where both sides' pawns started disappearing in a hurry. With the draw Jakovenko concluded an outstanding result, but it wasn't quite good enough.
Reader Comments (3)
It has been a long time since USA has qualified two players for the Candidates Tournament. They both have a real change to qualify to be the next World Championship Challenger. American chess is definitely looking up.
Has the US ever had two qualified players?
[DM: Sure, Fischer and Benko - twice. And in 1973 it was even better: Fischer was the world champion and Robert Byrne was a Candidate. Also, in 1948, both Reshevsky and Fine were invited to play in the world championship, though Fine declined.]
Also, it seems fit to point out that the wildcard spot does require the person to be 2750 fide which is currently only 15 players in the world. And only 11 of those 15 can be invited.
@Daniel: Regulations (https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/regscandidates2016.pdf) say "with a rating of at least 2725 in the FIDE rating list of 1st July 2015" - currently 27 players are eligible [Vachier-Lagrave would need to regain at least 2 points in his next events - French Team Championship and Norway Chess, Wei Yi is in striking distance if he plays somewhere in June].