Wesley So Wins the Sinquefield Cup
Big congratulations are in order to Wesley So, who took clear first in the 2016 Sinquefield Cup and also leads in the overall Grand Chess Tour standings to boot.
He finished the tournament with three draws, and that proved to be enough. Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand were half a point back with three rounds to go, and they too drew their last three games.
In fact, all the games were drawn in round 7, while in round 8 Levon Aronian defeated Hikaru Nakamura to join the tie for second. (Peter Svidler was the day's other winner, defeating Anish Giri to drag the latter into a tie with him at the bottom of the tournament table.)
In the last round Fabiano Caruana defeated Giri to make it a four-way tie for second, while Nakamura bounced back with a win over Ding Liren. The game of the round was Topalov-Aronian. Had Topalov won - and he had a winning position in a rook endgame - he would have caught up to So and forced a playoff. The key decision Topalov had to make was which piece to use to support the a-pawn: the king or the rook. He chose the king, and it was the wrong decision.
Still, it was a good tournament for both of the "old" guys, Anand and Topalov, tying for second and gaining rating points. But of course, it was even better for So, who is still only 22 even though he seems to have been around forever. In fact, all the Americans did pretty well, so they should be in very good shape leading into the Olympiad on September 1. More good news for American fans: our fifth board, Sam Shankland, won the Master Tournament in Biel with a big score of 7.5/9 and saw his rating go up 18 points to 2679. (That puts him five points ahead of our fourth board, Ray Robson.) Look out, world!
Reader Comments (3)
I read that Svidler for one was jet lagged going into this tournament - of all the things you want to do with jet lag, chess is not one of them.
Wasn't Shankland going to quit chess a few years ago?
[DM: That was mostly a fit of pique about some troubles getting his last GM norm, IIRC. Ancient history now.]
What's up with Giri? It seems that he's had a string of bad tournaments. It's not just one event, but rather a sustained period of disappointing results.
It's always struck me with Giri that he's a very difficult player to beat, but he generally doesn't win a lot of games against the very top players. Do you think that's an accurate assessment of him?
[DM: He's still very young, and he just got married. That often (but not always) leads to a rating dip. He'll get used to married life and keep maturing as a chess player, and I would be very surprised if he doesn't become a perennial 2800-level player.]