The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen won the FTX Crypto Chess Cup beating Wesley So in an Armageddon tie-break. This win means that Carlsen will appear in the Meltwater tour final in September, although with his lead in the standings this seemed very likely anyway his victory in this last major means that he's already there by right.

Carlsen struggled with his form throughout the tournament, he almost didn't make it to the knockout phase. On the final day he took the lead winning the first game playing powerfully to exploit some only slightly misplaced pieces. In game two Carlsen almost certainly mixed something up in his opening preparation, and in a sharp Sicilian this proved to be enough for So to win extremely convincingly. The third game saw Carlsen play a very sharp exchange sacrifice which left So having to work hard to survive, but survive he did and Carlsen had to call off his winning attempts and agree to a draw by repetition before So developed his final piece. So decided to offer a quick draw in the final game and this was something Carlsen wanted also. In the blitz tie-break it looked like Carlsen was pressing with white but then he overlooked a tactic exploiting his back rank. Carlsen showed just how furious he was with himself on camera. Carlsen needed to win with black and he did in fact manage to do this. In the Armageddon tie-break So took the black pieces meaning Carlsen had an extra minute and had to win. Carlsen felt that the extra minute was very helpful to him and in the end So's position fell apart and a victorious Carlsen showed just how wound up he was in his celebration. He admitted he tried to calm down for this final game but he was not calm at all.

In the 3rd-4th tie-break there was much more exciting than yesterday. White dominated all four games, Nepomniachtchi won games one and three, Radjabov won game two but couldn't quite make his advantage in game four add up to a win thus Nepomniachtchi won the match.

The next Grand Prix takes place June 26th to July 4th, there are three more in total before the Tour Finals which start on September 25th.