Hikaru Nakamura wins the GCT Paris tournament (Bltiz 10-18)

Hikarua Nakamura did enough on the final day of the Grand Chess Tour Paris tournament to secure a one point victory in the final standings of the event, a combination of results from the rapid and blitz. Nakamura took a one point lead from the rapid tournament into the blitz and this turned out to be the final margin.

Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen tied for first the blitz tournament. Carlsen led the blitz after the first day by half a point but while Nakamura and Carlsen both had a huge lead over the rest of the field in the combined standings neither played as well on the final day. Not that there were any weak players in this event, nor much place to hide, for example Kramnik collapsed to 1/9 on the last day. Maxime Vachier Lagrave (MVL) had a very fine, undefeated last day to secure 3rd place.

Final day scores: MVL 6.5pts/9, So, Topalov 5.5pts, Aronian, Nakamura 5pts, Giri, Carlsen, Caruana 4.5pts, Fressinet 3pts and Kramnik 1pt.

Carlsen started the final day with a win over So which allowed him to catch Nakamura in the standings, they both lost in round 11, Carlsen being a bit too creative against Caruana and MVL beating Nakamura, then Carlsen drew with MVL and Nakamura drew with Aronian. At this point there was an unscheduled break of about 45 minutes due to technical problems and after that, it's hard to say because of it, Carlsen had in his own words "A good old fashioned meltdown".

Carlsen lost to Aronian, beat a struggling Kramnik, lost to Giri and Topalov before beating Fressinet from a busted position. The latter win seemed to calm Carlsen a bit but the damage was mostly done, he'd even lost top spot on the live blitz rating list to Nakamura. Carlsen beat Nakamura in the final round to make his score look somewhat respectable and tie for first in the blitz and regain his top spot in the blitz rankings. Nakamura finished with wins against Kramnik, Giri and Fressinet with three draws before losing to Carlsen.

A bit surprising was the heavy use of quite standard openings even in the blitz. Almost all the players had decent runs in the event, even Topalov, who had a very reasonable final day after looking desperately out of touch on the other three days and Caruana too pulled things together in the blitz after terrible run in the rapid. It will be interesting to see how different things might be in Belgium next week.

Final blitz standings: Carlsen, Nakamura 11.5pts, MVL 11pts, Aronian, Caruana 10pts, Giri 9pts, So 8.5pts, Topalov 8pts, Kramnik 5.5pts, Fressinet 5pts.

Final combined standings: 1 Hikaru Nakamura 25½/36, 2 Magnus Carlsen 24½/36, 3 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 22/36, 4 Wesley So 19½/36, 5 Levon Aronian 19/36, 6 Anish Giri 18/36, 7 Vladimir Kramnik 15½/36, 8 Caruana, Fabiano 14/36, 9 Veselin Topalov 12/36, 10 Laurent Fressinet 10/36.

Laurent Fressinet will be replaced by Viswanathan Anand in the next event, with the same format, the YourNextMove Rapid and Blitz in Leuven, Belgium 17th-20th June 2016.

The Classical events, the Sinquefield Cup 1st to 16th August and the London Chess Classic 8th to 19th December, will complete the series.

Grand Chess Tour Paris 2016 (Bltiz 10-18)

Mark Crowther (Sun Jun 12 20:37:00 2016)