A burst of three consecutive wins in rounds 5, 6 and 7 against Constantin Lupulescu, Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana were sufficient to win Shakhriyar Mamedyarov the Superbet Chess Classic with 6/9 a point clear of Levon Aronian, Wesley So and Alexander Grischuk.

All the games were drawn in the final round. First to finish was Levon Aronian against Teimour Radjabov (who drew all his games) in just 14 moves. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave drew against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, this result confirmed Mamedyarov's tournament win, MVL's choice of the Four Knights wasn't particularly inspiring.

Giri-Grischuk was an interesting Giuoco Piano that finished in a draw in 42 moves. Lupulescu-So was a pretty drawish variation of the Qc2 Nimzo-Indian (although So did manage to lose one once). Fabiano Caruana played a sideline as white mostly tried by very weak players and got significant edges at various stages against Bogdan-Daniel Deac only to let his opponent off the hook - the game was the final one to finish. Caruana tried pretty hard in this event but it just wasn't happening for him.

The Paris Rapid and Blitz starts on June 18th with many of the same players.

Final standings: 1st Mamedyarov 6pts, 2nd Aronian 5pts, 3rd So 5pts, 4th Grischuk 5pts, 5th Giri 4.5pts, 6th Radjabov 4.5pts, 7th Deac 4pts, 8th Caruana 4pts, 9th Lupulescu 3.5pts and 10th MVL 3.5pts.

Superbet Romania Chess Classic 2021 (9)

Mark Crowther (Mon Jun 14 19:09:00 2021)