In the Meantime...
Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 4:14PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2019 Biel, 2019 Dortmund, 2019 GCT Paris, 2019 Riga Grand Prix

It's terribly tempting to write a catch-up post, while we're closing up shop, to give the results of recent events. I will do so, but only in the most minimal way. Four big events have finished since we stopped covering tournaments: Dortmund, the Riga Grand Prix, Biel, and the Paris GCT Rapid & Blitz. Here, in brief, is what happened:

1. Dortmund was won by Leinier Dominguez, who scored 4.5/7. The winning margin was as slim as could be - he finished a mere half a point ahead of Ian Nepomniachtchi, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Richard Rapport and Teimour Radjabov. All but Nepo went undefeated ;he won three games (against the three tailenders) but lost to Dominguez (a 25-move massacre) and Rapport.

2. The Grand Prix tournament in Riga had a weird format: a knockout event, but with extra points given to players who won their knockout in the classical (pre-rapid & blitz tiebreaks) stage. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the Armageddon game to win the final; in the previous three stages, MVL won all his mini-matches in the classical portion while Shakh needed a playoff to get by Jan-Krzysztof Duda in the quarterfinals.

3. Biel was more of a mixed strength event, but its field of eight included two 2700s, and three players who either were 2700 or are or have been very close to it. In the end, the runaway winner was Santosh Gujrathi Vidit with 5.5/7, a point and a half ahead of Uzbeki prodigy Nodirbek Abdusattorov and two points ahead of Sam Shankland and Peter Leko. (Shankland is still just over 2700, while Jeffery Xiong, thanks in part to his fine performance in the concurrent Biel Master Open, is now the 6th U.S. player rated over 2700.

4. Finally, the Grand Chess Tour Rapid and Blitz event in Paris featured more choking than a cinematic double-header on the Heimlich maneuver and tracheotomies, but despite a 1-4 finish and an overall blitz performance that cost him 102 rating points, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won when Alexander Grischuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi repeatedly found ways not to catch the collapsing MVL. Amazingly, Viswanathan Anand came out of nowhere on the last day to finish a hair's breadth short of Vachier-Lagrave, coming up half a point short but leapfrogging Grischuk and Nepo in the last round to take clear second. MVL has often come up just short in high-pressure situations against his fellow elites, but I wonder if surviving this event to finish first will help him get over the psychological hump. Sometimes a little luck at crucial moments in one's career can be what one needs to progress to the next level.

For example, I don't remember Magnus Carlsen being an especially "clutch" player before the London Candidates. It's not that he was a choker, but I don't remember him being some sort of beast in high-pressure situations, either. And in that event, he nearly collapsed in the end, and was only bailed out by Vladimir Kramnik's overpressing against Vassily Ivanchuk, who played like a lunatic against everyone there but Kramnik (and Carlsen, in the antepenultimate round). But since then, Carlsen has been an unstoppable force when it matters - the only real collapse I can think of was at the end of the World Blitz Championship in Berlin a few years ago (the one where Ivanchuk beat him in one of the last rounds, jumping in his chair after making the winning move). Other than that, he has been a beast. Maybe having survived his ordeal, MVL will graduate as well.

Next up: the Grand Chess Tour goes to St. Louis, first for a rapid & blitz event like the one that just finished in Paris, followed by the Sinquefield Cup with a classical time control. Carlsen will be in action there, and if he can continue the form he has shown thus far this year he should manage to break his official peak rating, his peak live rating, and get within sniffing distance of 2900.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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