Kramnik Wins Razuvaev Memorial
Saturday, November 7, 2020 at 7:56PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Vladimir Kramnik

Not bad for a pensioner! Eight players who worked with the late Russian grandmaster Yuri Razuvaev contested an online blitz (5'+3") tournament: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Vladimir Kramnik, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Boris Gelfand, Joel Lautier, Alexander Motylev, Mikhail Kobalia, and Vladimir Potkin.

It was a two stage event: first a round-robin, and then a two-game playoff between the top two finishers. You might expect that the first cycle would be a race between Kramnik and Nepomniachtchi, and you'd be right. What you might not expect is that theirs was a race for second, as Evgeny Tomashevsky won the round-robin portion with an undefeated 6/7. Kramnik and Nepo fought it out for second, and they finished tied with 5/7. Unfortunately for Nepomniachtchi, Kramnik went undefeated while Nepomniachtchi went "undrawn" - all seven of his games had a winner. From those two bits of information we know that Kramnik won their head-to-head game, and that was presumably the reason he was the official runner-up.

Kramnik beat Tomashevsky in the first game of the final, and eked out a draw in game two to win the mini-match and the tournament. In a nice touch, the prize-winners donated their money to Razuvaev's widow - good for them, and for the organizers, who (I'm guessing) suggested this in advance.

More on this, including games and video, here.

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