Karjakin wins the Astana World Rapid Chess Championship

World blitz and rapid chess championship

The Official World Blitz and Rapid Chess Championships are being held from July 1-11, 2012, in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. It is worth noting that the Rapid Chess Championship is a first in the history of FIDE! The top ten players of the current FIDE rating list have the right to take part in the championships. The total prize fund is US $400,000.

The qualifiers held prior to the finals saw chess players from all over the world getting a chance to advance to the main event. Alexey Dreev, Igor Kurnosov and Vladislav Tkachiev won places, Murtas Kazhgaleyev and Anuar Ismagambetov were nominations by the host nation.

Third day

Magnus Carlsen, who had dominated the Rapid on days one and two, started the third day with a win over the lowest seed. It took him 51 moves and didn't bode well for what was to come. In round twelve the top seed lost, with the white pieces (yes, Virginia, that is indeed possible!), against Vassily Ivanchuk, who outplayed the Norwegian in a Nimzo-Indian and forced him to resign four before a forced mate. In round 13 Magnus chose the Berlin Defence against Alexander Grischuk and lost for a second time (yes, Virginia, that too is possible and does not contravene the laws of nature). Carlsen drew the final two game, against Radjabov and Topalov to finish with 10.5 out of 15 with a 2854 performance.

Magnus Carlsen ran out of steam on the third day of play?

While all this was happening Sergey Karjakin, like Carlsen a former chess prodigy, was on a rampage. He won is first four games, against Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Kazhgaleyev and Svidler, with white, black, white and black. Already a full point in the lead he only needed to draw against Kurnosov to win the event – which he did, to the delight of his fans.

The winner: Sergey Karjakin (archive photo)

So it was Karjakin at 11.5/15 (and a 2917 performance), Carlsen in second a point behind, and Veselin Topalov sharing 3-4 with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, both at 9.5/15. The Bulgarian former FIDE world champion could have finished equal second with Magnus Carlsen if he hadn't botched up the following game in astonishing fashion:

Our hero of the day, Sergey Karjakin, started with a 75-mover against his compatriot Vassily Ivanchuk, who pressed so hard for a win (in an essentially drawn position) that he forgot about the clock and overstepped the time. Incidentally Vasl went on the defeat Carlsen in the very next round – talk about a nerves-of-steel comeback. In the next round Serge defeated local wildcard Murtas Kazhgaleyev, almost 200 points below him on the rating scale, with ruthless efficience after the Kazakh GM committed a minor infringement on move 39:

In the penultimate round Karjakin, playing black, forced Peter Svidler to resign after 44 move. That gave him at least joint victory, which he turn into an unshared title with a draw against Kurnosov, as we said above. The second place was decided in the following encounter:

Final standings (after fifteen rounds of play)

Of the 120 games played on all three days 42 were drawn (=35%). White won 47 games (=39.2%) and Black 31 (=25.8%). The shortest game was a 20-move win, and just two games were drawn in less than 25 moves. It was indeed an exciting, well-fought event.

Curious about the shortest game? Well, here it is:

Remaining program

World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship

The World Rapid Chess Championship will be played in three days as a round-robin event with five rounds per day. Time controls are 15 minutes for all moves plus 10 seconds increment per move. The World Blitz is a sixteen-player double round robin with 15 rounds per day. The time control is three minutes + two seconds increment per move. These are the participants

Tiebreak rules for first place: (a) results between the players involved; (b) number of wins; (c) Sonneborn-Berger score; (d) Sudden death game: 5 min vs 4 min.

Videos of the second day in Astana (Russian, with English subtitles)

Magnus Carlsen talks about the game he won against Sergey Karjakin in round ten

• Lots of video reports (total 34 right now!) like those above are to be found here

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games of the Finals will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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