The final day of the preliminary stage of Airthings Masters produced much more drama than the first two. It suffices to say that before the final round Magnus Carlsen secured his spot in the knockout stage, David Anton was out of the running but all the rest had a chance to qualify.
After the dust settled, it’s Carlsen-Dubov, MVL-So, Nakamura-Aronian, and Radjabov-Nepomniachtchi in the Airthings Masters quarterfinals whereas heavyweights Alexander Grischuk and Anish Giri knocked out by the finest of margins. Grischuk missed a win (20.g4!) then lost a drawish rook ending to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave who wrestled a spot in the quarterfinals from him.
Most likely Anish Giri lived to regret going all-in against Hikaru Nakamura with Black. In the end, a draw would have been enough for him to clinch a quarterfinal spot but it did not happen.
The final standings saw Carlsen, So and Nakamura tied for first place, with Magnus taking the top spot on the tiebreak of having won the mini-league between the three players by beating Hikaru in Round 10.
The drama, however, was at the bottom, when it surprisingly turned out that -1, or 5/11, was the cut-off score for qualifying. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who seemed to be out of contention, was suddenly able to take 7th place after beating Grischuk with the black pieces, condemning the Russian to finish 10th after all the other games between players on 5/11 had been drawn. Daniil Dubov, who began the day in 1st place, only scraped through on the tiebreak of scoring more wins (2) than Harikrishna (0).
The bottom four were eliminated, though after David Anton beat Levon Aronian in the final round the gap between 1st and last place was mere two points.
Play will resume at 15:00 CET on Tuesday, with Day 1 quarterfinals consisting of mini-matches of four 15+10 games. On Wednesday another four games will be played, and only if the match score is then level at 1:1 will we get two 5+3 blitz games followed, if necessary, by Armageddon, where White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4 but a draw will see the player with the black pieces reach the semi-finals.
Text: Colin McGourty (chess24)
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