Aronian stuns Carlsen to face Artemiev in the final
A stunning end to the Goldmoney Asian Rapid semis saw Levon Aronian don his lucky Boston Celtics basketball jersey before slam-dunking Magnus Carlsen in overtime. The Armenian star, 38, pulled off an incredible comeback on the buzzer to beat the champ twice in tiebreaks and book a place in the $100,000 event’s final. Aronian, a big Celtics fan, will meet Tour debutant Vladislav Artemiev who also came from behind in stunning fashion to win on a breathless day of chess. It sets up a treat of a final between two underdogs that no one expected to get this far. Carlsen, the reigning World Champion, had been gunning for a hat-trick of wins in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, having won the New In Chess Classic and the FTX Crypto Cup. But that run came to an end when Aronian thrashed him 3-1 in today’s second match and then again in the resulting play-off to turn the tie around. “This is something I dedicated my life to, proving people wrong,” Aronian said afterwards. “I am always excited when I can.” He added: “It’s been a very tough day, very tense.” Artemiev, the Russian speed demon, came back from even further behind to shoot down world number 3 Ding Liren. Having lost yesterday, Artemiev was heading for defeat again before a catastrophic blunder from Ding in the final game let the youngster back into the match. Ding, who rarely shows his emotion in matches, was visibly distraught. The Russian, who has been the surprise package of this tournament, then took all that momentum into the blitz tiebreak and ran out the winner. At 23, he will now be the youngest player to play in a Tour final. “It was a very difficult match,” Artemiev said. “Yesterday I lost with zero chances and I was disappointed. Today I wanted to give a fight to my opponent.” The final carries a $30,000 first prize and a coveted spot in the Tour finals in September for the winner. Carlsen and Ding, meanwhile, will fight it out for Tour points in a third-place play-off match. The Goldmoney Asian Rapid is broadcast live on Norwegian TV station TV 2 and streamed with commentary in several languages on chess24’s YouTube and Twitch channels. Highlights will also be available in 60 countries on the Eurosport app. Play resumes tomorrow at 13:00 CEST. All games will be played on the chess24.com playzone. For further information, please contact: Leon Watson, PR for Play Magnus Group leon@chessable.com+44 7786 078 770
WSCC 2021: Hou Yifan reaches the final
Hou Yifan defeated Lei Tingjie 11.5:9.5 in the Chinese semifinal derby and advanced to the final of the FIDE Chess.com Women’s Speed Chess Championship in which she will face Harika Dronavalli. The top-rated female player convincingly won the first 5+1 segment, but Lei Tingjie fought back in the 3+1 portion of the match to narrow the gap to just one point. The final 1+1 portion was a close affair, but Hou Yifan eventually got the better of her opponent to punch her ticket into the final. “It was a tough match for both of the players,” commented Hou Yifan. “I got some advantage after 5+1 but Tingjie had a comeback in 3+1 – at some moment, I lost 3 or 4 games in a row … The turning point was me winning a game pawn down, a few games before the final one.” The final is scheduled for Saturday, June 3. The FIDE Chess.com 2021 Women’s Speed Chess Championship is an online competition for titled female players. The qualifiers for the event took place from May 28-June 6, while the main event runs from June 10 to July 3. Players are battling for their share of a total prize fund of $66,000. Fans can follow the FIDE Chess.com Women’s Speed Chess Championship by watching the live broadcast with expert commentary on Chess.com/TV and Chess.com’s Twitch channel. They will also be able to enjoy the event through Chess.com’s Events page (https://www.chess.com/events). More info and a full schedule of the FIDE Chess.com Women’s Speed Chess Championship can be found here.
FIDE Binance Business Schools Super Cup announced
The International Chess Federation and Binance, TigerTrade and CryptoUniverse are excited to hold the first FIDE Binance Business Schools Super Cup, an online team competition that will take place from July 9-11, 2021. The Cup is an excellent chance for participating teams to get new business opportunities through chess and network with the world’s top business schools. With 64 teams and over 250 participants expected, the tournament will be a truly global team event uniting students and employees from business schools from all parts of the world. “More importantly, through the practice of chess, your alumnus and students will also be training useful skills like decision making, creative thinking, problem-solving approach, and the ability to calculate a few moves ahead. All this in a competitive but fun environment. We believe this is also a chance for the participating business schools to detect talent, reach new clients and business opportunities, and develop contacts with leaders and representatives of national and multinational businesses,” said FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich. The FIDE Binance Business Schools Super Cup 2021 will consist of two stages: a division and playoff stages. During the first two days, the teams divided by geographic principle will play round-robin tournaments, while on July 11 knock-out event will be held. The time control for all matches is 10 minutes for the game and two seconds increment per move, starting from move one. Each team will consist of four players, including at least one male player and at least one female player, and may have two reserves. They also have a right to include one invited player – a person not from business school – to be part of the team. The event will be played online, on the Lichess platform, and broadcasted live on FIDE Youtube and Twitch channels. The winning team will be declared Business Schools Super Cup Champion 2021 and will get the Winner’s Cup. Besides, the best four finishing teams in the final standings will secure seats in an online simul against one of the top grandmasters. FIDE Binance Business Schools Super Cup regulations (pdf) Applications for participation are accepted until July 07, 2021: https://www.binance.com/en/event/binancechesscup General inquires: businessschools@fide.com Media Contact: press@fide.com About the sponsors: Binance is the world’s leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider with a financial product suite that includes the largest digital asset exchange by volume. Trusted by millions worldwide, the Binance platform is dedicated to increasing the freedom of money for users, and features an unmatched portfolio of crypto products and offerings, including: trading and finance, education, data and research, social good, investment and incubation, decentralization and infrastructure solutions, and more. TigerTrade is an innovative software package for securities and cryptocurrency traders. TigerTrade company has over five years of software development experience in the trading field, and in this short time, TigerTrade has managed to earn the full trust of its loyal customer. More than 15,000 active users worldwide with a daily volume of 100 mil USD have already chosen TigerTrade for analysis and trading. TigerTrade provides intuitive interactive visualization of market data, 30+ components for cluster analysis, flexible, customizable workspace with the support of a few monitors, and other tools and features. CryptoUniverse.io is one of the largest mining platforms in the world, offering power and equipment for cryptocurrency mining since 2017. Registered in Estonia under EU law, it owns one of the biggest data centers in CIS, located in the Republic of Karelia. Its overall capacity is 120 MW, with electricity coming from a private hydroelectric power plant, leaving no carbon footprint. The company is glad to participate in the Cup because chess and IT management have much in common in terms of considering various moves and outcomes. About the organizers: Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO is one of the leading business schools in Russia and the post-Soviet states established in 2006 by the business community. In 2020 it became No.1 in Eastern Europe in terms of quality of corporate programmes according to the Financial Times ranking. The School was awarded the EQUIS EFMD accreditation – one of the most prestigious international accreditations granted to 1% of the leading international business schools. The idea of the Cup belongs to its alumni: Oxana Kosteniuk, the president of the SKOLKOVO Chess Club, and its members: Sergey Raytsev, Tigran Mamikonian, Alexey Maiorov and Yuriy Mordvin. Lichess is a completely free, open-source chess platform — exclusively powered by volunteers and donations. Today, Lichess users play more than 3 million games every day. Lichess is one of the most popular chess websites in the world while remaining 100% free. Despite starting out as just a chessboard, Lichess now has a wide variety of features to meet the needs of the internet chess community: play, learn, events, community. Championat.com is the leading sports digital media in Russia and CIS. We are in the TOP-7 of Similar Web in category “sports media in the world”. More than 36 million unique visitors enjoyed Championat.com in May 2021.