Magnus Carlsen wins the FTX Crypto Cup

GM Magnus Carlsen won the FTX Crypto Cup on Sunday despite losing his final match in a tiebreak to GM Praggnanandhaa R., securing second place in the tournament. GM Alireza Firouzja finished third.

Carlsen-Praggnanandhaa 2-4

In what was a dream final for the tournament, the two dominant players were paired against each other on the final day. Neither played at their very best, but the game was definitely entertaining.

After two draws, Carlsen won the third game, with which he won the tournament, because even if he were to lose the remaining games, he would get a point to reach the tiebreak. And that’s exactly what happened: Pragg equalized and then won both games in a blitz tiebreak.

Although not terrible according to the engine, 16…b5 in the fourth rapid game seemed too frivolous for Carlsen, who admitted that he lacked motivation at the time. “I think Magnus just wanted more fun, that was it,” Praggnanandhaa said. “This 16…b5 is unnecessary. I think he just wanted to have fun and try to beat me.”

Carlsen was about to force an armageddon when he got into a complete winning position in the second blitz. But then he collapsed unexpectedly, first missing a winning tactic and then getting it wrong again:

Afterwards, Carlsen said: “I felt terrible today; I didn’t get enough sleep, I just wasn’t in good shape. I’m very happy and relieved to have won the tournament. Of course I would have liked to have done better in today it’s really embarrassing to lose the last three games, but overall the feelings are obviously positive. I wish I could have kept my level until the end. I didn’t, but it’s still a great result.

Firouzja-Aronian 2.5-1.5

Firouzja was “best of the rest”, in fact, achieving the same score as Praggnanandhaa, but coming out on the first tiebreak, which was mutual score. The French-Iranian Grandmaster drew three matches with GM Levon Aronian and then won the fourth:

Duda-Giri 2.5-0.5

GM Anish Giri again did not have a good “major” and said he needs to examine why he is underperforming in this round-robin format compared to the other, with preliminary followed by a knockout.

What didn’t help was that before his second match with GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Giri was locked out of his hotel room, preventing him from preparing (as in, remembering) any opening moves. Referring to one of the Niemann interviews, the Dutchman commented:

“I’m not going to say ‘I think this is ridiculous and it shouldn’t happen!’ but I’m honestly not sure if I would have repeated that line because there were other things he could do and I don’t know if i was in the mood to repeat a lot of lines anyway but that file was open so i could have anyway i got a nice position and i lost more than one game today so that wasn’t the reason for my loss yesterday I didn’t get locked out of my room and I lost anyway, so that’s not the reason, but still, it’s kind of funny that when things don’t go your way, a lot of details get missed.”

Here’s the second game, where Giri lost quickly:

Duda: “I think I was in pretty bad shape, so actually it’s pretty nice that I was able to win against almost anyone.”

Asked if he understands Niemann’s frustrations, Giri joked, “I think the frustrations are mainly mine because I can’t crack the tournament and couldn’t crack the interviews. I don’t have a field where I can dominate anymore!”

Le-Niemann 2.5-1.5

Poor GM Hans Niemann ended up losing all his games. He was mildly positive about making it to four games on the final day, saying: “I don’t think my morale is completely broken, so at least it’s progress.”

GM Le Quang Liem, who won two matches, lost one and drew one, said of his last match: “In reality, today was not so smooth because the first match I should have lost. Also this last match, at one point was worse . But it was a very interesting match. I guess he should be able to tie in the playoffs, but he had a low time. Very difficult.”

Here’s game four:

All games round 7

FTX Crypto Cup | Final location

The FTX Crypto Cup, the sixth event of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, took place 15-21. August 2022 at chess24. The format was a round-robin among eight players, who played a match of four quick games (15+10) in each round. The winner earned $7,500 and three points. In the event of a tie, a two-game blitz tiebreak (5+3) was played, followed by an armageddon game (5 vs. 4). If so, the winner earned $5,000 and two points; the loser, $2,500 and one point. The prize pool was $210,000 plus another $100,000 tied to the price of Bitcoin.

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