Tata Steel: Van Foreest Defeats Giri in a Playoff to Win the Tournament

It's a bizarre result, worthy of a year that seems to have inherited more than its fair share of 2020's turmoil. Anish Giri entered the last round of the Tata Steel chess tournament in clear first, half a point ahead of his Dutch countryman Jorden Van Foreest, Fabiano Caruana, and Alireza Firouzja. All four with favorites in their respective games, but only one managed to win.

Caruana had Black against Aryan Tari, the bottom seed (though by no means the tailender - he finished with a very respectable -1 score). Unfortunately, Tari chickened out with the Exchange Variation against the French (or maybe he hoped that Caruana would do something crazy trying to create winning chances against it), and while Caruana did outplay him for a time, he never managed to dredge up enough and Tari held the draw.

Firouzja came much closer with White against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. He was much better-to-winning for most of the game, and only on move 61 did he let his winning chances slip away for good. Apparently, though, he would not have been in contention for the title even had he won: he would have tied for first, but his tiebreak score would have left him outside of the playoff.

Van Foreest made it into the playoff by crushing Nils Grandelius, whose second half was as unpleasant as the first half was delightful. Grandelius led just before the halfway mark with 4/6, but only managed two points in his remaining seven games.

Giri, as you will have gathered from the subject line and from simple logic, drew his game. He was in serious danger of losing to David Anton with Black in a positional Najdorf, but White's technique wasn't good enough to finish the job. So it was on a playoff, with the winner to become the first Dutch player to win their country's remaining extant super-tournament since Jan Timman did it in 1985.

In the ensuing blitz (5'+3") playoff, Giri was winning the first game, with Black, but failed to convert his advantage: draw. In game 2 Giri was much better, if perhaps never clearly winning, but once again the game finished in a draw. Finally, it was time for an Armageddon game, and Giri was absolutely winning this game - at two different stretches. Unfortunately, on the very last move without a prior increment (move 60) Giri made a colossal error that transformed the game from completely winning to totally lost, and Van Foreest won the playoff and the tournament. All credit to him for surviving the playoff, but it has to be said that Giri distributed more gifts than Santa Claus on the Oprah Winfrey show.

It was a great event for Van Foreest (and for the even younger Andrey Esipenko, who also won in the last round and also made it to 2700 by tournament's end), who obviously achieved a career result. Is he too old at 21 to be talked about as a future member of the world's elite? By the standards of the last 20-30 years the answer would seem to be yes, and even here, aside from an almost comically fortunate win in an Armageddon game he didn't beat any of the elite players. Still, he is just 21, this was a great result, and none of the elite players managed to beat him, either. So we'll see, and hopefully he gets some other invitations to classical events, and the critical experience that goes along with it. That he has achieved as much as he has with so few opportunities to play slow games against 2700-level opponents is extremely impressive. With the world's absolute elite committed to the almost hermetically sealed Grand Chess Tour, and the only slightly less exclusive FIDE world championship qualifying events, it is difficult for Van Foreest (or any other up-and-comer) to get much experience against the absolute top players, but hopefully this will be a crowbar that opens the door for him (and Esipenko).

Here are Van Foreest's games from the last day of the event, and here are the final standings:

• 1-2. Van Foreest, Giri 8.5 (out of 13)
• 3-5. Esipenko (who won in the last round vs. Donchenko), Caruana, Firouzja 8
• 6. Carlsen 7.5 (Thanks to a last-round win over poor MVL.)
• 7. Harikrishna 6.5
• 8-9. Tari, Grandelius 6
• 10. Duda 5.5
• 11-13. Wojtaszek, Anton, Vachier-Lagrave 5
• 14. Donchenko 3.5

Tata Steel: Giri Clings to a Half-Point Lead with One Round to Go

And that round will take place in a few hours.

Anish Giri could have clinched a tie for first, as he was very much winning against Alireza Firouzja in round 12. Somehow, he failed to convert; in part thanks to Firouzja's dogged defense, but some of Giri's errors were unforced, too. Thanks to his narrow escape, Firouzja, as well as Fabiano Caruana and Jorden Van Foreest(!) are all just half a point behind Giri entering the last round.

Going back to round 11, one of the tournament's Cinderella stories came to an end when Andrey Esipenko played a very poor game against Aryan Tari. After going undefeated to that point and having defeated Magnus Carlsen, he may have lost his sense of danger when facing the lowest-rated player in the event. He took some unjustified risks in the early middlegame, and soon his position was critical. Things got worse, and Tari rounded the game off with some nice attacking play at the end. It was a pity for Esipenko, but a good lesson for the next time.

Another very important game in round 11 was Firouzja vs. Caruana. First it was Caruana - twice - who could have obtained (or more precisely, maintained) a winning advantage afforded by his opponent's errors on the preceding moves. But then it was Firouzja who had a more durable winning advantage of his own, but a few inaccuracies allowed Caruana to slip out to a drawn major piece ending.

Also in round 11: Van Foreest's win over Pentala Harikrishna brought him into the tie for second Esipenko was simultaneously leaving. Harikrishna played overexuberantly with Black, offering an unsound piece sacrifice (perhaps, like Esipenko, he underestimated his opponent?), and Van Foreest refuted it on the way to a longish but always nearly certain win.

I've analyzed the games above, along with what I take to be a cute moment in the game between Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Caruana from round 12, here. The tournament website is here, and these are the pairings for the final round (which starts two hours early, at 12:00 CET/6:00 A.M. ET): 

• Anton (4.5) - Giri (8)
• Donchenko (3.5) - Esipenko (7)
• Carlsen (6.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (5)
• Van Foreest (7.5) - Grandelius (6)
• Tari (5.5) - Caruana (7.5)
• Firouzja (7.5) - Wojtaszek (4.5)
• Duda (5) - Harikrishna (6)

Tata Steel (Wijk aan Zee): Grandelius Supplanted by Firouza and then Giri

Nils Grandelius did a fine job through the first half of the tournament, but the caliber of the opposition has finally overtaken him. When we left off after round five of the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, he enjoyed the solo lead, and he remained there after a draw with Fabiano Caruana in round six. To show the size of the peleton chasing him, however, all we need to know is that when he lost in the next round to Anish Giri, he was then in a tie for fifth-eighth places, half a point behind a quartet of leaders: Giri, Caruana, Alireza Firouzja and, surprisingly, Jorden Van Foreest.

Van Foreest's sharing the lead was a surprise, but as his two wins were against low-rated (relatively speaking, of course) tailenders Aryan Tari (in round seven) and David Anton (in round 6), it seemed rather early to worry about his possible coronation. He has drawn his last three games and is currently a point off the pace, but it's still a terrific performance for him. His rating is 2671, but his TPR of 2812 has netted him 19 rating points thus far.

Just like Van Foreest, Firouzja also won in rounds 6 and 7 (over Alexander Donchenko and Jan-Krzysztof Duda, respectively), and he made it a hat trick by defeating Pentala Harikrishna in round 8 to take the lead by himself. Those three wins, plus an earlier win over Anton in round 3, left him half a point of his closest pursuers in spite of his first-round loss to Magnus Carlsen.  Speaking of Carlsen, he had drawn six games in a row after that first-round win, and in round 8 he was absolutely crushed by the second-youngest player in the field (after the 17-year-old Firouzja), Russian prodigy Andrey Esipenko (18 years old). That left Carlsen a point and a half back, while Esipenko was part of a four-way tie for second.

In round 9 Firouzja was unable to defeat Esipenko, and this allowed Giri and Caruana to catch him by defeating Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Radoslaw Wojtaszek, respectively. MVL has had a dreadful tournament, and was at this point tied for last place with a -3 score. (He did win against his co-tailender Alexander Donchenko in round 10, but did so coming back from a completely lost position. Even so, he's out 21 rating points from the event and near the bottom.) Carlsen closed to within a point by defeating Grandelius (now a point and a half out of first), but with five people to leapfrog his chances wouldn't be so great.

Finally, round 10. Caruana won a pawn in the late opening/early middlegame against Carlsen, but surprisingly it was almost completely meaningless, and Carlsen held the draw seemingly effortlessly. Firouzja was unable to beat Grandelius, so this gave Giri the opportunity to take sole leadership with a win over Wojtaszek. The players reached an ending that looked drawish - because it was - but Giri managed to create some problems and Wojtaszek let things slip away. So Giri is in first with 7/10, and thanks to Esipenko's win over Anton he has joined Caruana and Firouzja in the group half a point back. Van Foreest is another half a point behind, and could have been a fourth player in the tie for second if he had figured out how to finish off Duda. Carlsen is alone in sixth, again a point and a half out of first. With only three rounds to go, it looks like yet another tournament the world champion is not going to win. It's bad for him, perhaps, but good for the rest of the world and for those who prefer drama to seeing one player steamrolling the rest in event after event. (Whichever side of that divide you fall on, there's good reason to think that Juggernaut Magnus will return soon. I also suspect that Magnus and other top players, too, have to get reacclimated to over-the-board, classical events, after a year of online rapid and blitz [with lots of streaming to boot].)

Here are the round 11 pairings (on Friday; Thursday is the final rest day of the event): 

• Wojtaszek (3.5) - MVL (4)
• Carlsen (5.5) - Giri (7) (Obviously Carlsen must win this game if he is to have any chance of winning the tournament)
• Firouzja (6.5) - Caruana (6.5)
• Anton (3.5) - Grandelius (5)
• Tari (4) - Esipenko (6.5)
• Van Foreest (6) - Harikrishna (5)
• Donchenko (3) - Duda (4)

Tournament site here, three games (with various quantities of comments) here.

Tata Steel (Wijk aan Zee): Grandelius Back in Clear First After Five Rounds

He's still hanging in there. I'm waiting for Nils Grandelius to remember that he's one of the lowest seeds, and to his great credit, he's treating the ratings as if they're meaningless. Good for him! The ghosts of Schlechter, Andersson, and Giri continue to cast their pall over the tournament, but while six of the seven games this round finished in a draw, one did not. With Black against Grandelius, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave either forgot his preparation or came up with a terrible ad lib against Grandelius, and paid the price. The game was of no theoretical significance whatsoever - Black had repeatedly achieved very easy draws from the position where MVL (probably unknowingly) innovated. The lesson is more practical, and it's an encouragement to us: it's reminder 352,487 that even super-GMs can't keep everything in their memories, no matter how brilliant and diligent they are. (Here's the game, with my notes.)

The round six pairings for Wijk aan Zee are:

• Duda (2) - Carlsen (3)
• Van Foreest (2.5) - Anton (2)
• Vachier-Lagrave (2) - Tari (2)
• Grandelius (3.5) - Caruana (3)
• Harikrishna (3) - Wojtaszek (2.5)
• Esipenko (2.5) - Giri (3)
• Donchenko (1.5) - Firouzja (2.5)

Tata Steel (Wijk aan Zee): Five Tied for First after Four Rounds

As expected, Nils Grandelius was quickly caught; as wasn't expected, he remains in a tie for first. Granted, it's still very early - there are nine rounds left in Wijk aan Zee - but Grandelius is (generally) playing well, and several other underdogs are hanging in there.

In round 3, Grandelius lost on the white side of an Advance French against Pentala Harikrishna. It's a model game for Black, and the result was that the winner caught up with the loser. Had Magnus Carlsen beaten his countryman Aryan Tari, he'd have taken the lead, but he was unable to win. That's a three-way tie. Likewise, had Fabiano Caruana managed to finish a brilliant game against Jan-Krzysztof Duda he'd have taken the clear lead, but he too only managed a draw. That's a four-way tie for first. Anish Giri made it a five-way tie for first when he drew with Alexander Donchenko. The other two games saw Alireza Firouzja defeat David Anton to close to get back to 50%, while Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Jorden Van Foreest drew their game.

In round 4, all seven games were drawn, so the five-way tie for first remained in place. Some players had winning chances, though. Grandelius in particular was winning with Black against Andrey Esipenko, but let the advantage slip away in time trouble. The craziest game of all was Tari vs. Firouzja, which went back and forth in a wild draw that ended after just 30 moves. The razor sharp opening and the game ending when it did might lead one to suspect that this was some sort of crazy prep, but this was not the case. Both players made serious errors that even took their position from winning to losing. It's a great game to analyze, and I'll leave that pleasure to you.

Wednesday is a rest day, and on Thursday we get these pairings.

• Carlsen (2.5) - Donchenko (1)
• Firouzja (2) - Van Foreest (2)
• Anton (1.5) - Tari (1.5)
• Giri (2.5) - Harikrishna (2.5)
• Caruana (2.5) - Esipenko (2)
• Grandelius (2.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (2)
• Wojtaszek (2) - Duda (1.5)

This will be an important day for the non-world champions in the field, as Magnus Carlsen will have the white pieces against tailender Alexander Donchenko. Carlsen doesn't always manage to catch the leader when he's trailing (though he often does), but when he's leading he's almost never caught.

Tata Steel (Wijk aan Zee) Underway

In fact the Tata Steel Chess Tournament started this weekend - in person - and as usual it's a mix of super-elite players (e.g. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri) and some players from the second tier (e.g. Dutch players other than Giri, the winner of last year's B-group). That helps make things spicy, and for the moment one of the Liliputians (relatively speaking!) is off to the early lead: Nils Grandelius is the only player with 2/2, thanks to wins over Alexander Donchenko and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. It's a 13-round event, so the odds of Grandelius remaining in first by the time it's over are extremely low, but the chance for Rocky to beat Apollo is always part of the excitement of any sporting event.

Three of the top dogs mentioned above (Carlsen, Caruana, and Giri) are just half a point behind; here's the schedule for round 3, with player scores given in parentheses:

• Esipenko (1) - Vachier-Lagrave (1)
• Grandelius (2) - Harikrishna (1)
• Caruana (1.5) - Duda (.5)
• Giri (1.5) - Donchenko (0)
• Wojtaszek (1) - Van Foreest (Jorden) (1)
• Carlsen (1.5) - Tari (.5)
• Firouzja (.5) - Anton Guijarro (1)