World Cup Finale: Duda, Karjakin Qualify for the 2022 Candidates

Again, just tidying up on ancient history: Jan Krzysztof Duda finished the tournament of his young life - thus far - in fantastic style, defeated World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the semi-finals of the World Cup to qualify for next year's Candidates, while Sergey Karjakin also qualified by meeting Duda there. Duda won that final match to win the event, garnering more money and more prestige, but both players succeeded in their primary aim.

This means that half the eight Candidates' spots are settled. In addition to Duda and Karjakin, one spot will go to the loser of the world championship match between Carlsen and challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi in November, and another is going to Teimour Radjabov (as compensation for his not playing in the 2020 Candidates).

In the old days (e.g. the previous cycle) one slot would be allocated by rating, but unfortunately for (most likely) Fabiano Caruana, that is no longer the case. Two spots will be allocated to the top two finishers in the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament (starting October 25 in Riga) and two more spots go to the top two finishers in the FIDE Grand Prix (a series of three tournaments to be played between February and April of next year in Berlin; 24 players will qualify for this series, with each playing in two of the three events).

I congratulate FIDE on their continual improvements on the world championship cycle. In the old days, the world's best players were the most likely to get a shot at becoming the world champion. Those foolish days are long gone - Caissa has been deposed, and replaced by the worship of Tyche.

FIDE World Cup: Karjakin Guarantees Himself a Candidates Spot; Duda Hoping for the Second Spot

Sorry not to have covered the event as it deserved, but...life. Anyway, the parodying event I feared would come to pass is very close to happening. The 2021 FIDE World Cup is on the verge of its final match; Sergey Karjakin is one finalist (he defeated Vladimir Fedoseev 1.5-.5 in the regular, classical games) and the winner of today's tiebreaker between Magnus Carlsen and Jan-Krzysztof Duda will be the other. As the main point of the event is to qualify two players for the 2022 Candidates, Carlsen's participation is, frankly, rather stupid, as no matter what happens in his match with Ian Nepomniachtchi he's guaranteed of being either the world champion or qualified for the Candidates. Karjakin is guaranteed a place in the Candidates no matter what happens in the final match, but none of the players Carlsen beat prior to the semi-finals will qualify, even though they might well have made it had the world champion not participated.

It's especially a pity for Etienne Bacrot, who lost to Carlsen in the quarter-finals, and especially for Andrey Esipenko, who made it to three rounds of tiebreaks before Carlsen finally eliminated him.

World Cup, Round 4 Update: Lots of Tiebreaks Tomorrow

Only eight of the 16 matches have finished with a winner after the two classical games, so there will be plenty of tiebreak action to enjoy tomorrow.

The headliner will be Magnus Carlsen, who failed to convert a winning advantage in a very sharp position against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. Had he done so, it would have been an attacking masterpiece, but even world champions slip from time to time.

The winner of that match will face the winner of the all-Russian clash between Daniil Dubov vs. Andrey Esipenko, which is also headed for tiebreaks after a second, much less eventful draw.

Another Russian headed for tiebreaks is Pavel Ponkratov, who avenged his loss yesterday to Etienne Bacrot with a (mostly) convincing win. The winner of that match will play Kacper Piorun, who drew very comfortably with White against Javokhir Sindarov after beating him yesterday.

Alexander Grischuk and Anton Korobov are headed for tiebreaks after a pair of short draws, with the winner going on to face Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who drew with White against Pouya Idani before beating him Black. That second game seemed on its way to an uneventful draw before Idani got himself tangled up on the queenside, losing a pawn and then the game.

Jeffery Xiong is out, losing 2-0 to Santosh Gujrathi Vidit, leaving the U.S. with only one surviving representative. He lost the first game by going a bit nuts with an attacking idea at the end of the time control, and in game two, as often happens in these situations, the need to make "something" happen resulted in his overstepping the bounds of safety, and Vidit was more than able to punish him for it.

Vidit will play the winner of the match between Vasif Durarbayli and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Durarbayli won the first game with Black, but the Uzbek prodigy struck back in game two, sending them to tomorrow's tiebreaks. Durarbayli found himself in a very bad position with White just after the opening, so note to self (and anyone else reading this): the Philidor might be a decent opening to try in a must-win game with Black.

Vladimir Fedoseev blanked Vladislav Kovalev 2-0, and will await the winner of the match between Dmitry Andreikin and Velmir Ivic. Andreikin is a heavy favorite against Ivic, but as the games have gone he's lucky to be reaching the tiebreaks. I'd never heard of Ivic before this event, but the 18-year-old Serb seems like an up-and-comer.

Another surprise in the event is Amin Tabatabaei, who defeated Pentala Harikrishna. He won the first game, and held on to draw the second. He'll face another dark horse, Haik Martirosyan, who defeated Ante Brkic in the first game and drew the second (from a superior position) to clinch the match.

There haven't been a lot of super-GMs mentioned in the foregoing, but now they start to show up again. After his scare against David Paravyan, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave looked much better in his match against the young Indian star Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. MVL had no trouble drawing the first game with Black, and rolled him with White in game 2. Praggnanandhaa chose a very dangerous opening line, and was punished for it.

MVL will play the winner of another all-Russian match, between Sergey Karjakin and Vladislav Artemiev. The played a couple of short draws, but Karjakin was under some pressure in the second game.

Still another all-Russian match with a pair of fairly short draws, and thus headed to tiebreaks, was the face-off between Peter Svidler and Nikita Vitiugov. They will face the last American standing (or sitting?), Sam Shankland. Shankland defeated Caruana-conquerer Rinat Jumabayev with a win in the first game and a draw in the second. Jumabayev very definitely made a game of it, choosing the very rare Nimzowitsch Defense: 1.e4 Nc6 2.d4 d5. I'm not sure if it can be recommended against a prepared opponent, but to judge by this game it's fine as a surprise weapon.

On to tiebreaks, with, one hopes, lots of Armageddon games.

World Cup, Post-Round 3 Update

Oof, what a round. The most dramatic result - and the most painful one for most U.S. fans - was the elimination of Fabiano Caruana against Rinat Jumabayev. Caruana drew the first classical game with Black without any difficulties, but went nuts in his white game with 27.g5? Bxf1? 28.Rxf1?, leaving him with no real compensation for the sacrificed material. Happily for Team America, Jumabayev erred with 32...Nf6, and Caruana made it to the time control with equality. Alas, Caruana's 41st move was a blunder (or if you think that only obvious errors can be blunders, it was a big mistake). Jumabayev took his time, figured it out, and took advantage.

This was not the only upset, however. Anish Giri, the fourth seed, was also bounced; in his case by Uzbek prodigy Nodirbek Abdusattorov. They drew their classical games, and then Abdusattorov won both tiebreak games to advance. In the first of those games Giri took what seemed to me unnecessary risks, perhaps trying too hard to create winning chances, but it wasn't fatal until he played 37.Re3 rather than 37.Kxg4. It's clear he missed the very nice shot 37...h5!, after which the game was as good as over. The point was that capturing on d3 would lose a piece to a knight fork, e.g. 38.Nxd3 Rxd3 39.Rxd3 h4+ and 40.Kxg4 Ne5+ or 40.Kg2 Ne1+. Giri had great chances to equalize the scores in the rematch, but kept letting his young opponent slip away. The last moment when Giri had a winning advantage was on move 37, when his decision to take on e4 let White off the hook. From then on the game should have been drawn, but as a draw was as good as a loss Giri took some extreme chances in the hopes of scaring up some winning chances, and Abdusattorov took advantage.

Still another top guy losing: Shakhriyar Mamedyarov lost to Haik Martirosyan. Martirosyan won the first classical game, but Shakh struck back to force tiebreaks. The Armenian kept his cool though, and won a long game with Black to regain the lead, and was never in trouble in game 4.

Not quite as dramatic, but still significant: Evgeny Tomashevsky lost to Pouya Idani, Jorden van Foreest lost to Kacper Piorun, David Navara lost to Vasif Durarbayli and Jorge Cori lost to Javokhir Sindarov. Yu Yangyi lost to Amin Tabatabaei (and the latter defeated Pentala Harikrishna in the first game of their fourth round match today).

Some near-misses, headlined by the one match that went to Armageddon: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs. David Paravyan. MVL had excellent chances to finish the match before the last stage, but despite getting a lot of good positions and huge advantages on the clock he had a terrible time finishing the Russian off. Finally, he did the job when he absolutely needed to, winning with White in Armageddon. Vidit Gujrathi barely escaped against Baskaran Adhiban in a dramatic match that almost reached the Armageddon stage, and Jeffery Xiong needed some good luck in game two against Nils Grandelius to send the match to tiebreaks, where he finished on top.

Other notable upsets include Baseem Amin's losing to Etienne Bacrot, Salem Saleh losing 2-0 to Ante Brkic, and Matthias Bluebaum's falling to Velmir Ivic.

"Only" 32 players left, with the following pairings, given in bracket order (with today's game 1 results given in parentheses [the player's name given means he won]):

Carlsen - Wojtaszek (draw)
Dubov - Esipenko (draw)

Ponkratov - Bacrot (Bacrot)
Piorun - Sindarov (Piorun)

Grischuk - Korobov (draw)
Idani - Duda (draw)

Gujrathi - Xiong (Gujrathi)
Durarbayli - Abdusattorov (Durarbayli)

Kovalev - Fedoseev (Fedoseev)
Ivic - Andreikin (draw)

Harikrishna - Tabatabaei (Tabatabaei)
Brkic - Martirosyan (Martirosyan)

Vachier-Lagrave - Pragnanandhaa (draw)
Artemiev - Karjakin (draw)

Vitiugov - Svidler (draw)
Shankland - Jumabayev (Shankland)

The top seeds remaining are Carlsen (#1, and who had been perfect until today), Grischuk (#5), MVL (#7), and Karjakin (#10). And that's it for the top 10! As for the poor U.S. of A., we're down to Xiong (#20, but lost his first game to #13 Gujrathi) and Shankland (#31, but won against #66 Jumabayev, who defeated Caruana). No Chinese players remain, but Russia still remembers how to dominate: they have 10 players left in the field.

World Cup, Post-Round 2 Update

"Only" 64 players are left in the 2021 FIDE World Cup, a massive knockout event in Sochi, Russia. While Magnus Carlsen is participating and plenty of money is at stake, its primary function is to find two qualifiers for the 2022 Candidates, with the next six qualifying for the FIDE Grand Prix next year (unless the player in question is the world champion or qualified for the Candidates through another path). We'll worry about all of that later; for the time being, let's see how the tournament is going.

The top two seeds are alive and kicking - Carlsen had a bye in round 1, and won in round 2 2-0 over Sasa Martinovic. Fabiano Caruana had a bye in round 1 as well (all the top seeds did), and only needed 15 moves to advance through round 2. His opponent, Susanto Megaranto got his positive test result for COVID 15 moves into that first game, and that was the end of that match.

The third seed, however, made an even faster exit - Levon Aronian forfeited his match to Bobby Cheng due to tonsilitis - and hopefully only tonsilitis. #4 Anish Giri beat Boris Savchenko 2-0, Alexander Grischuk (#5) defeated Federico Perez Ponsa 1.5-.5, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (#6) beat Krikor Mekhitarian 3-1 (i.e. 2-0 in tiebreaks), and then things get interesting. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave defeated Elshan Moradiabadi 1.5-.5, but he was completely lost in the first game - even when the draw was agreed. Moradiabadi was offered no such mercy in round 2, and he was crushed in 23 moves.

The last paragraph had two bits of bad news for U.S. chess fans, and there's more to come. But first, a big upset: Alireza Firouzja lost 3.5-2.5 (2.5-1.5 in tiebreaks) to Uzbek prodigy Javokhir Sindarov, one of the select few to earn the GM title before his 13th birthday. And the number 9 may have been a good one for weird Beatles songs, but it wasn't a happy seeding for Leinier Dominguez, who lost 2-0 at the tiebreak stage to another young Uzbek GM, Jahongir Vakhidov.

That's three of the four American representatives mentioned so far getting eliminated. Let's give the full recap:

Dominguez - gone.

Andrew Tang - gone in round 1, losing to Sindarov (the player who beat Firouzja in round 2) 1.5-.5.

Samuel Sevian - alive and kicking, defeating Sumant Subramaniam 2-0 in round 1 and Benjamin Bok 4-2 in round 2.

Varuzhan Akobian - gone. He beat Esteban V. Quiceno 2.5-1.5 in round 1, but lost to Nils Grandelius by the same score in round 2.

Jeffery Xiong - alive and kicking. He had a bye in round 1, and defeated Victor Mikhalevski 1.5-.5 in round 2.

Timur Gareyev - alive and kicking. He needed two sets of tiebreaks to get past Tin Jingyao in round 1, 4-2, but beat erstwhile 2700 Dmitry Jakovenko 2.5-1.5 in round 2.

Robert Hungaski - gone. He lost to Velimir Ivic 1.5-.5 in the first round.

Moradiabadi - gone. He had a walkover (COVID test?) in round 1 against Helgi Dam Ziska, but lost to MVL in round 2, as mentioned above.

Alexander Onischuk - gone. He beat Akar Ali Salih Salih 2-0 in round 1, but was himself bageled in round 2 by David Paravyan.

Yaroslav Zherebukh - gone. He defeated Evgenios Ioannidis 1.5-.5 in the first round, but lost a very winnable match against Alexei Shirov in round 2. He lost the first classical game, but struck back with Black to win game 2 to send it to tiebreaks, and then won the first tiebreak game - again with Black - to reach the cusp of the next round. Unfortunately, Zherebukh doesn't seem to have any normal openings in his white repertoire, and while he didn't always get into trouble with his goofy b3 systems as white Shirov was always able to create the sort of mess he thrives on. Shirov won game 4 with Black, quickly, in a massacre, and then won again with Black in game 5. This time, however, it was a topsy-turvy fight, and Zherebukh enjoyed a winning advantage there more than once. Finally, Shirov showed that the player with the white pieces wasn't thereby obliged to lose, and won quickly to win the match by a 4-2 score.

Sam Shankland - alive and kicking. He had a bye in the first round, and beat Baadur Jobava 1.5-.5 in round 2.

Abhimanyu Mishra - gone. The world's youngest-ever GM (for now; I don't think this record will last all that long, so enjoy it while you've got it, A.M.!) lost to the aforementioned Jobava 1.5-.5 in round 1.

Caruana - alive and kicking. As mentioned above, 15 moves have sufficed for him to reach round 3.

Here are the round 3 matches, in bracket order (round 3 runs Sunday through Tuesday):

Carlsen - Tari
Wojtaszek - Matlakov

Dubov - Malakhov
Abasov - Esipenko

Vakhidov - Ponkratov
Bacrot - Amin

van Foreest - Piorun
Cori - Sindarov

Grischuk - Pichot
Korobov - Georgiev (one of the two old-timers remaining in the event; he's 55)

Tomashevsky - Idani
Sevian - Duda

Gujrathi - Adhiban
Grandelius - Xiong

Navara - Durarbayli
Abdusattorov - Giri

Cheng - Kovalev
Gareyev - Fedoseev

Ivic - Bluebaum
Sarin - Andreikin

Harikrishna - Lupulescu
Tabatabaei - Yu Yangyi

Brkic - Saleh
Martirosyan - Mamedyarov

Vachier-Lagrave - Paravyan
Praggnanandhaa - Krasenkow (the official tournament grandpa, aged 57)

Artemiev - Gelfand (a spring chicken at 53)
Oparin - Karjakin

Vitiugov - Shirov
Cheparinov - Svidler (Cheparinov was incredibly fortunate to defeat Svane in tiebreaks in round 2)

Shankland - Areshchenko
Jumabayev - Caruana

Those of you who have been following the event carefully are invited - urged, even - to mention in the comments the best games you've seen in the event thus far.

COVID At the World Cup **UPDATED**

Greeeeeeat. According to Chess24's Facebook page (HT: Allen Becker), Levon Aronian forfeited the first game of his World Cup match with Bobby Cheng due to a possible COVID infection, though he still may able to return for game 2. And Fabiano Caruana won the first game of his match with Indonesian GM Susanto Megaranto when the latter was forced to resign after move 15 because he - Megaranto - had a positive COVID test. (And now we have to see if Caruana will wind up testing positive.)

Unless the players have been wearing masks and engaging in social distancing - and even then there are no guarantees - this could turn out to be a disaster. What is FIDE going to do if everyone ends up testing positive in a week or so?

**UPDATE** It isn't clear if Aronian had (and has) COVID, but he does have (at least) tonsilitis. From his Facebook page (HT, once again, to Allen Becker):

Dear all, with great regret I have to inform you about my withdrawal from the FIDE World Cup 2021. Having a high fever and tonsillitis, despite my great desire to play, I have to be rational and put mine, and the health of other players first.

I want to personally thank the FIDE President Mr. Dvorkovich for taking all possible actions to help me in any issues I got.

Please take care of yourself, and hopefully the tournament will continue without any misfortunes.

I promise to get healthy soon and come back to the magical world of 64 squares!

Other Events: Leon, San Fermin Masters, World Cup

It's a busy time on the chess calendar, as if the chess world is trying to make up for last year (though last year was also packed with top-level events, albeit online rapid and/or blitz events), and in addition to the Goldmoney event that finished last week (won by Levon Aronian, who defeated Magnus Carlsen in the semi-finals and Vladislav Artemiev in the final) and the Croatia Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz (won by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave) there are several other important events that have either finished or are about to start.

First, in the rear-view mirror, there's the 34th Leon Chess tournament that finished over the 4th of July weekend. (Not that the 4th of July, in the sense of Independence Day, would have had any significance for the event, which took place in Spain.) It was a four-player event won by Boris Gelfand after a tiebreaker against Leinier Dominguez. As with Viswanathan Anand's performance in Croatia (but not Garry Kasparov's - ugh), it was a fine achievement by a representative of the over-50 crowd.

Second, this past weekend there was an online blitz tournament which featured four qualifiers taking on Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Ding Liren, and Levon Aronian in an eight-player knockout event. Carlsen won, crushing So 4.5-1.5 in the semifinal and edging Aronian 5-3 in the final, avenging the latter's semi-final win against him in the Goldmoney event mentioned above.

Third and finally, the World Cup starts tomorrow (Monday). The event is, as usual, a qualifier for the next Candidates tournament (in 2022), so I don't like that Carlsen is again permitted to play. (He participated in the last World Cup as well, fortunately getting eliminated before he could interfere with the prospects of the likely winners/Candidates.) It makes a little more sense than letting Donald Trump run for the Democratic party nomination last year, but not much. Anyway, it'll be a great event, and from a purely chess point of view Carlsen's participation will enhance the event.

For my fellow Americans: the U.S.A. is well-represented, with 14 participants: Fabiano Caruana (world #2), Abhimanyu Mishra (the newly-minted world's youngest-ever GM), Sam Shankland (unfortunately Mishra's opponent in round 2, if Mishra can defeat Baadur Jobava), Yaroslav Zherebukh, Alexander Onischuk, Elshan Moradiabadi, Robert Hungaski, Timur Gareyev, Levon Aronian, Jeffery Xiong, Varuzhan Akobian, Samuel Sevian, bullet specialist Andrew Tang, and Leinier Dominguez.

Predictions: Who will win? How many Americans will make it to round 3? If you don't think Carlsen will win, how far will he get? Will any players 25 years of age or under make it to the quarterfinals? The semifinals?