A little joke in the title, alluding to Magnus Carlsen's having already won the event with a round to spare. He duly collected his free point by showing up, resulting from Daniil Dubov's positive COVID-19 test a few days ago. That guaranteed that he would win the event by at least a full point, and as neither of his closest pursuers - Richard Rapport and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - were interested in outdoing the other, their very quick draws left Carlsen the winner by a point and a half. Rapport drew with Anish Giri in 14 moves, while Mamedyarov split the point with Fabiano Caruana in 13 moves.
Those three games featured no drama and only 27 moves in total, but the other four games were interesting and hard-fought, with three of them finishing with a winner. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa won on the white side of a Saemisch Nimzo-Indian, thanks to Andrey Esipenko's big mistake on move 27.
Sergey Karjakin played an extremely unambitious line of the Scotch Four Knights against Vidit Gujrathi, but when Vidit started making problems for himself Karjakin was happy to take advantage and reel in the full point.
Jorden Van Foreest didn't succeed in repeating as the tournament winner, but for one of the bottom seeds to finish with +1 it was still an excellent result. He won a long, grinding game against Sam Shankland, who was still within range of a draw until his 53rd move.
Finally, Nils Grandelius and Jan-Krzysztof Duda drew a wild game after a somewhat bizarre opening. First Grandelius had a big advantage, but went for a mistaken tactical idea. Grandelius probably missed Duda's 24...f6!!, but Duda needed to find one more great move to win. He played 26...bxc3, which allowed Grandelius to make a draw. Instead, 26...Qb7!! was correct, putting an end to White's counterattacking prospects and taking over the initiative. White keeps his extra piece, but with three pawns and domination in the center, Black would enjoy a winning advantage.
So that's it for the first super-tournament of the year. Carlsen got the year off to a good start, adding three points to his rating to reach 2868. Mamedyarov gained nine points to get to #5 in the world. For Caruana, by contrast, it was a disappointing event. He's still #4 in the world, but he lost 10 points and finished with only an even score.
Another notable aspect of the tournament was Dubov's getting COVID. There was concern that he might get it, having been in "close contact" with someone who had contracted the virus, and so the organizers requested that he wear a mask. He refused, and had to forfeit a game. He was then cleared to play, but several days later did in fact come down with COVID. With the FIDE Grand Prix starting in a few days, what happens if Rapport, who played in Wijk and is playing the Grand Prix, caught the virus from Dubov and is forced to forfeit one or more games there? Hopefully the scenario won't arise, but organizers need to decide what they are going to do about situations like this in the future. (Readers, your thoughts? Please focus your comments on situations like Dubov's rather than a more general policy about vaccines, masks, St. Fauci/evil Fauci, etc.)
Let's wrap this up. The last round games, with my notes, are here, and the final standings follow. (An asterisk notes that the player obtained a forfeit win over Dubov.) I should add that Arjun Erigaisi won the Challengers event with an impressive score of 10.5/13. He cooled off over the last few rounds, though he did win in the last round. He finished two points ahead of his closest pursuers, finished with a TPR of 2804 (better than all but the top three of the main event), and qualified for next year's main event.