Carlsen and Koneru are the 2019 World Rapid Champions
Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Humpy Kuneru of India are the winners of the 2019 World rapid chess championship which ended on Saturday evening in Moscow. With eight wins, seven draws, and no defeats, the Norwegian grandmaster comfortably won the Open Rapid and his third rapid title. In the Women’s Rapid, the winner was determined in a playoff between the first two of three players sharing first place. Humpy Koneru won the dual after defeating China’s Lei Tingjie in a dramatic “Armageddon” battle. “To win it all you need an attacking mindset” Speaking to the media after his convincing victory in the Open Rapid section, Magnus Carlsen, who finished a whole point ahead of everyone else, said that he was very happy with his performance in the tournament saying that he “handled it fairly well.” “The first two days were the most difficult for me. I took some time to get going. I had a difficult game against Aronian and I am very happy about my performance”, Carlsen said. “Some of my opponents perhaps lacked the cutting edge, but in such a tournament in order to win all you need is to have an attacking mindset. There are a lot of people here who had good performances but they could have pushed even more.” When asked about his most difficult opponents in the tournament, Carlsen singled out three players: “I had some very difficult positions against Mamedov, Melkumyan and Wang Hao. I defended some worse positions for sure, but I never thought I was lost.” The Open Rapid: Carlsen’s path to victory in Moscow Carlsen set off on his path to victory with three wins and two draws on day one. He accelerated on the second day with four wins and two draws. After getting in the poll-position at the end of the second day, with 8/10 and half a point above the rest, on the third day of the Rapid Magnus Carlsen continued to improve his already confident performance and tightened his grip around the first place. It wasn’t completely spotless for Carlsen, but it was more than enough. In Round 11 he drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. After securing a better position, Carlsen missed the best continuation allowing the queens exchange. The situation on the board developed into a rook endgame, which did not give the Norwegian sufficient advantage to press for a victory over his French opponent. In Round 12 Carlsen was White against Levon Aronian. In a tense queen endgame, Aronian simply blundered his strongest piece and lost. This was the moment when Carlsen increased his margin over everybody else to a whole point. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was next in the line. Until playing Carlsen in Round 13, Mamedyarov had six victories, five draws and only one loss (to Vachier-Lagrave in Round 10). He was playing with authority, but all his confidence disappeared in the game against Carlsen where the Azeri GM played a line that did not suit his style and quickly lost. Carlsen was now a point and a half ahead of everybody else. A face-paced game followed in Round 14 in which Carlsen agreed to a draw with Leinier Dominguez Perez. Having finished this round first among the top boards, he was instantly now 2 points ahead of everyone before the final game, which meant that if anyone wanted to catch him, he had to win in the 14th round. Only Vladislav Artemiev, who defeated Vachier-Lagrave and Hikaru Nakamura who downed Ilia Smirin were up to the task. Nakamura had his destiny in his hands: had he beaten Carlsen, both would have been on 11 points meaning there would be a playoff. Either because of being tired or thinking it was pointless to expect winning over the Norwegian who was at the top of his game, Nakamura went for a quick draw after 22 moves, allowing Magnus to claim the title of the Rapid World Champion, one point ahead everybody else. A surprise runner-up Alireza Firouzja (who recently left the Iranian chess federation and participated in the tournament under the flag of FIDE) emerged second although he made his way to the top board only in the final round. Firouzja, however, had a very good tournament, defeating Mamedyarov in the final round and finishing on 10.5/15. In the final standings, he was ranked first among those tied for second to fourth places. The remaining two were Hikaru Nakamura and Vladimir Artemiev, all on 10.5/15. The places 5-11 are shared among seven players who scored 10/15: Aronian, Dominguez, Duda, Dubov, Korobov, David Anton and Yu Yangyi. The rapid also saw a great performance by the 51-year-old Ilia Smirin who, having shared the first place after the first day (with Wang Hao), finished 15th with 9.5 points, but throughout the tournament was playing at the top boards. 1. Magnus Carlsen (NOR) 2886 – 11½2. Alireza Firouzja (FID) 2614 – 10½3. Hikaru Nakamura (USA) 2819 – 10½4. Vladislav Artemiev (RUS) 2756 – 10½5. Levon Aronian (ARM) 2784 – 106. Leinier Dominguez Perez (USA) 2755 – 107. Jan-Krzysztof Duda (POL) 2751 – 108. Daniil Dubov (RUS) 2752 – 109. Anton Korobov (UKR) 2818 – 1010. David Anton (ESP) 2709 – 10 The Women’s rapid: Blunders leading to Armageddon Great turnarounds in competitions often arise when one side performs better than his or her opponent. Sometimes, however, changes happen not due to someone’s brilliance but rather because of their opponent’s misstep. This seemed to be the case in many of the games on the final day of the Women’s Rapid. After two days and eight rounds of play, there were four players sharing the first place, with 6.5/8: Irina Bulmaga, Tan Zhongyi, Lei Tingjie, and Mariya Muzychuk. The second tier, with 6/8 was made up of Humpy Koneru, Olga Girya, Kateryna Lagno, Harika Dronavalli, Ekaterina Atalik, and Anna Muzychuk. Several key games on the final day were decided by the blunders of players who had significantly better positions. Round Nine began with a Chinese derby, where Lei Tingjie had White against Tan Zhongyi. This turned out to be the key game of Lei’s path to the top in the Rapid. Tan achieved a