Leuven Blitz, Day 2: Carlsen Wins
Magnus Carlsen wasn't quite as devastating as he had been on day 2 of the rapid portion of the tournament, but by jetting out to a +4=2 start today he clinched clear first with three rounds to go. After that he lost, Elmer Fudd-style, to Anish Giri (trying to annihilate the "rabbit" he burned his bridges and lost pretty badly) and drew his last two games. That was still good enough to win the tournament by 2.5 points.
The race for second was a close one between Wesley So, Levon Aronian, and Viswanathan Anand, and in the end the honors went to So. With two rounds to play So led Anand by half a point, and Aronian was another half a point behind. So drew with Carlsen, while Aronian defeated Anand to leapfrog him. In the last round all three players drew, resulting in So taking second and Aronian finishing in third.
After Anand, the next finisher was another two points back, so there were essentially two tournaments going on - or maybe three: Carlsen's coronation, the race for second, and then everyone else. Here are the final standings, first for the blitz portion and then overall:
Blitz:
- 1. Carlsen 11 (of 18)
- 2. Aronian 10
- 3-5. Anand, Nakamura, So 9.5
- 6-7. Kramnik, Vachier-Lagrave 9
- 8. Caruana 8.5
- 9. Giri 8
- 10. Topalov 6
Overall Standings:
- 1. Carlsen 23 (of 36)
- 2. So 20.5
- 3. Aronian 20
- 4. Anand 19.5
- 5. Caruana 17.5
- 6. Vachier-Lagrave 17
- 7. Nakamura 16.5
- 8-9. Kramnik, Giri 16
- 10. Topalov 14
Reader Comments (1)
An interesting tidbit: Ding Liren is now the new number one on the Blitz live rating list.
[DM: Yes - I was just about to post on that!]