The Week in Chess

Jorden Van Foreest pulled off one of the great shocks in Tata Steel history in winning the 83rd event and becoming the first Dutch winner since Jan Timman in 1985. Van Foreest and Anish Giri drew the two blitz tie-break games, then there was a final Armageddon tie-break where Van Foreest had draw odds - he won on time in the end. As 11th seed Van Foreest was on no-one's list of potential winners but he was well prepared and solid. Earlier he beat Nils Grandelius in a very fine game indeed with a vicious new idea against the Najdorf Sicilian. Giri had his own troubles and was in severe danger of losing to David Anton for much of the final round before fighting back to draw in the end.

This was a really fine final round Magnus Carlsen finished the event with a win but was unsparing in the criticism of his own play. Carlsen finished on +2 which was a bad result by his own high standards but was not the catastrophe that his opponent Maxime Vachier-Lagrave had, this was his fourth loss of the tournament. Two players that hoped to get into a tie-break for the tournament title were Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja. Caruana was happy with his opening against Aryan Tari but branded his 11...Ng6 as careless, 12...f5 was risky but he never came close to getting the win he needed. Firouzja looked to be heading for a win against Radoslaw Wojtaszek but allowed his opponent to escape with a draw (52.Qg4? 52.d5! wins but he was winning later too with 60.Be5!), towards the end it was clear even a win wouldn't get him into the tie-break match as his Sonneborn–Berger was worse than Van Foreest and Giri's. Alexander Donchenko finished a bad event for him with yet another loss as he subsided to defeat against Andrey Esipenko Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Pentala Harikrishna drew a fairly uneventful game.

Final Round 13 Standings: 1st Van Foreest 8.5pts (TB 53), 2nd Giri 8.5pts (52.25), 3rd Esipenko 8pts (49), 4th Caruana 8pts (48.25), 5th Firouzja 8pts (48), 6th Carlsen 7.5pts (47.25), 7th Harikrishna 6.5pts (38.75), 8th Tari 6pts (38), 9th Grandelius 6pts (34), 10th Duda 5.5pts (35.75), 11th Anton Guijarro 5pts (30.75), 12th Wojtaszek 5pts (30.75), 13th Vachier-Lagrave 5pts (29.75) and 14th Donchenko 3.5pts (23).