Grand Chess Tour: Anand stays on course for finale

MUMBAI: A fabulous performance in blitz at the Superbet Rapid and Blitz Romania that ended on Sunday helped India’s Viswanathan Anand finish overall third in the event, behind Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin, to maintain his chances of qualifying for the Grand Chess Tour’s four-player finale to be played in London from December 2-8.

Anand, seventh in the GCT standings before the Bucharest event—sixth of the seven events leading up to the finale—with 24 points from three events, got eight points with Armenia’s Aronian and Russia’s Karjakin taking 11 each.

In Romania, Anand finished with 19½ points from 27 games (9 rapid, 18 blitz). Aronian defeated Karjakin in the tiebreak to claim the title after both were tied on top with 20 points each.

In GCT, each of the 12 full Tour participants have to play in two classical and three rapid and blitz events.

Anand (32 points) lies sixth overall, behind Norway’s classical and blitz world champion Magnus Carlsen (54.5 points), Ding Liren (37.8) of China, Maxime Vachier-lagrave (36.8) of

France, Aronian (36.5) and Karjakin (36.5).

India’s five-time world classical champion is hoping to take one of the three places up for grabs as only six points separate Ding, Vachier-lagrave, Aronian, Karjakin and Anand ahead of the final event—tata Steel Chess India Rapid and Blitz tournament to be played in Kolkata from November 22-26. In rapid and blitz, an outright title win is worth 13 points with 12 for tie-break win. The second player gets 10 and the third eight, etc.

Anand’s chances are good as Vachier-lagrave and Karjakin have completed their quota of five events. Carlsen, who skipped the Romania event, has a big lead. The race thus is between Ding, Aronian and Anand as they bid to push Vachier-lagrave and Karjakin down the standings.

Anand, who will defend his blitz title in Kolkata, laid the foundation in Romania.

He had reached Bucharest with the sole aim of gaining points to make it to the London finale. He didn’t gain much in rapid, finishing joint fifth with 4½ points from a possible nine. He started with a win against wild card Vladislav Artemiev but losses to Anton Korobov (4th round), Karjakin (8th) and Le

Quang Liem (9th) pushed him down despite beating American Fabiano Caruana (7th). That meant the 49-year-old failed to gain much in the overall GCT standings.

However, in the blitz Anand won six of the 18 games, losing only three. On the last day of the two-day blitz, the Indian played risk-free chess after defeating Caruana, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan and Anton Korobov of Ukraine (wild card and winner of the rapid section) in the 10th, 11th and 12th rounds. He drew the remaining six games without exerting much as he seemed to have achieved his main purpose of gaining points and wanted to conserve energy for the battles in Kolkata.

STANDINGS

1. Magnus Carlsen 54.5 pts ($205,000) 2. Ding Liren 37.8 pts ($132,333) 3. Maxime Vachier-lagrave 36.8 pts ($100,000)

T4. Levon Aronian 36.5 ($113,750), Sergey Karjakin 36.5 ($99,250)

7. Fabiano Caruana 26.5 ($76,250) 8. Wesley So 26 ($92,500)

9. Ian Nepomniachtchi 24.5 ($58,580) 10. Anish Giri 19 ($49,833)

11. Hikaru Nakamura 17.5 ($50,000) 12. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 16 ($48,750).