Oslo Esports Cup 2022

The Oslo Esports Cup is the opening event for the 2022 Meltwater Champions Tour, and as you'd expect from last year's Tour it's a very strong tournament. Magnus Carlsen leads the parade of stars, which also includes top-name players like Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Anish Giri, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. It's an eight player round robin, with each round a best-of-four game match with a 15'+10" time control.

Round 1 was on Friday, with these results: 

• Carlsen 2.5 - Duda .5
• Giri 2.5 - Eric Hansen 1.5
• Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (P.R.) 2.5 - Jorden Van Foreest .5
• Mamedyarov 2.5 - Le Quang Liem 1.5 

Many of these results were turned upside down in round 2, on Saturday: 

• Le 2.5 - Carlsen 1.5
• P.R. 2.5 - Mamedyarov .5
• Van Foreest 2.5 - Hansen 1.5
• Duda 4 - Giri 2 

Everyone is 1-1 except for Hansen, who lost twice, and Praggnanandhaa, who has not only won twice but crushed his opponents.

Tournament site here; games here.

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)

Carlsen-Firouzja, and More

Last year it was Chess.com that had all the interesting online chess; this year it's Chess24. The Peter Svidler vs. Santosh Vidit match started a few minutes ago, and will be followed by the Pentala Harikrishna vs. Jan-Krzysztof Duda match. There's also an ongoing warm-up match for Anish Giri, against Jorden Van Foreest, helping him prep for the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, which starts on Saturday. And finally, the day and time has been set for the Banter Blitz finale between Carlsen and 16-year-old Alireza Firouzja: it will be on Wednesday (April 15) at 19:00 CEST/1 p.m. ET.

2019 Wijk aan Zee, Round 2: The Dutch Giveth, the Dutch Taketh Away

In round 1, the two Dutch participants in this year's Tata Steel Chess Tournament, Anish Giri and Jorden Van Foreest, lost with the white pieces. No problem: they promptly won with the black pieces in round 2. Giri took advantage of Vladimir Kramnik's crazy all-in approach. Kramnik barely got away with it in round 1, surviving, as he likes to say, by a "miracle" against Teimour Radjabov, but Giri was unforgiving today. As for Van Foreest, his game with Duda was balanced for quite a while, with Duda's kingside play sufficing for equality against VF's positional pluses. Duda was slightly outplayed as the game went on, but the real damage didn't happen until the last few moves of the time control. Duda made several serious errors in a row - and this continued after the time control as well, though it was already too late by then.

Other games were mirrors of what happened in round 1. For instance, Sam Shankland again managed to outplay his opponent - Richard Rapport in this case - and once again faltered near the finish line. After playing a great grinding game and finally getting a winning position against Rapport, he gave it away with one sloppy move, 74...h5. Alas!

Magnus Carlsen's second round game also bore some resemblance to what he did in round 1. It was again a short draw if one just counts the moves, but as in round 1 it was a wild game, full of content. Another repeated idea is that he once again sacrificed an exchange; in fact, in this game (against Ian Nepomniachtchi) he upped the ante and made it a full rook sacrifice. It wasn't enough for an advantage, but it made for an exciting game in any case.

The remaining games weren't so interesting. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Teimour Radjabov played a quick, short (32 moves) draw, as they often do, and no one was remotely close to being in danger. This makes 22 drawn games in a row between them going back to 2012, many of them in under 20 moves. Draw your own conclusions (pun intended). Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Fedoseev's game had a little more life, but not much: Fedoseev's Petroff did what the Petroff was designed to do and they called it a day after 34 moves. Finally, Ding Liren obtained an advantage against Santosh Viidt Gujrathi, but couldn't maintain it, and they split the point after move 33. (Games here, but this time without annotations.)

The tournament leaders are thus the same as the leaders after yesterday's games: Anand and Nepomniachtchi. The caboose is brought up by today's victims, Kramnik and Duda, and everyone else has one point. Here are the pairings for tomorrow's (Monday's) round 3:

• Vidit (1) - Carlsen (1)
• Van Foreest (1) - Ding (1)
• Fedoseev (1) - Duda (.5)
• Shankland (1) - Anand (1.5)
• Radjabov (1) - Rapport (1)
• Giri (1) - Mamedyarov (1)
• Nepomniachtchi (1.5) - Kramnik (.5)

A question in parting: why is Carlsen given as board 1 every round, just as at the last two World Rapid & Blitz Championships? He isn't pairing number 1 (as I understand it, he would have had the white pieces in round 1 if he were) and the board numbers aren't determined by rating. Is this another Norwegian TV thing? Can they really not set up their cameras on a different board? Not even Garry Kasparov ever received such treatment. Hopefully players, sponsors, and the media won't have to start referring to him with honorifics and be forced to retreat from his presence by walking backwards and always facing him.