Alireza Firouzja is one of the strongest 17-year-olds in history. Very few other players are in the conversation with him: Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Magnus Carlsen were comparably strong at that age. And Firouzja is already #18 in the world. He's an amazing player, and he seems to be afraid of no one...
Or almost no one. Today Firouzja lost in mind-blowing fashion against Carlsen, and it was the third such mind-blower in the last 10 months. The first was his inexplicable loss to Carlsen in the World Rapid & Blitz last December, the second was his loss in the Armageddon game in the first cycle of this event, and the third came today. Somehow Firouzja lost in a king and pawn ending that many mid-level club players could draw in their sleep, an ending I could have drawn as a pre-teen many years ago. This isn't a sign of my precocity, but of just how elementary the ending was*. So what happened today was either an amazing gap in his knowledge--possible, I guess, but really hard to believe for a mid-2700 player--or a case of terrible nerves, or some combination of the two. He's still very young, and getting stronger every day, but he must work on his nerves before this becomes a habit that prevents him from reaching that last rung.
As a result of Carlsen's win, he clinched tournament victory with a round to spare. He would have won even if his other closest pursuers, Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana, had likewise won their classical games, but they didn't. They both won their Armageddon games, against Aryan Tari and Jan-Krzysztof Duda, respectively, but fell further behind Carlsen and failed to overtake Firouzja.
The tournament ends tomorrow/today (Friday), and these are the last-round pairings:
Here's the Firouzja-Carlsen game.
* Those who watched the live broadcast and the commentary from Vladimir Kramnik and Judit Polgar may wonder if it was really that obvious, as Kramnik in particular thought that it would have been easier to keep the minor pieces on the board. (The video is here, with the decision to head for the pawn ending around the 3:57 (that's hours and minutes) mark. There is discussion of it before that, however, so if you're really curious you can go back before that.) This strikes me as completely nuts - the pawn ending is mind-numbingly simple, as you'll see in the notes, while I think there are ways for Black to keep pushing with the minor pieces on the board. To my mind, the main issue is nerves - look at how Firouzja is shaking almost uncontrollably at the end (starting around 4:01:35, ramping every few seconds until his hands are flapping like a fish in a boat).