Khanty-Mansiysk GP Recap

The fourth and final stage of the 2014-2015 Grand Prix Series. This tournament is specially important as it will determine the winner and runner up of this year, both of which will automatically qualify for the 2015 Candidates Tournament - the winner of that will challenge Magnus Carlsen to the World Championship Match! The tournament is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Ugra, Russia from May 13 to May 27.

Khanty-Mansiysk Recap

The FIDE Grand Prix has come and gone, a much shorter ordeal than last year's five tournament per player marathon. With only four venues and each player playing in three of them, the favorites quickly rose to the top. By the end of Tashkent, the second tournament of the series, Nakamura and Caruana were already the clear favorites. Andreikin had some outside chances, but with a dismal performance in both Baku and Tbilisi that did not come to happen.

Plenty of players came into Khanty-Mansiysk hopeful for a position in the Candidates - a reward for finishing in the top two of the Grand Prix series. Tomashevsky had his opportunity: after winning Tbilisi and having a solid Baku, he came into the tournament leading the standings.

The pace was set by round three: Caruana faced Tomashevsky in a crucial match for the standings. Behind Tomashevsky, Caruana came as the favorite. He was second in the rankings and was the top seed of the event. He made this felt in the third round.

Caruana led the event from this game on

Despite winning his first round, Tomashevsky found himself in -1 after his fifth round loss to Karjakin. He lost again to Giri in the seventh and finally defeated Svidler on the ninth, but it was too little too late.

At 64 average moves per game, no one cane blame Tomashevsky for not trying

Meanwhile Nakamura had a very stable tournament. Despite some of his aggressive opening decisions, his games ended up being quite solid. Even his Dragons resulted in quiet endgames. After six consecutive draws he finally found his momentum, feeding off the poor tournament that both Vachier-Lagrave and Jobava had, beating them in consecutive games in rounds seven and eight.

However one final candidate for qualification appeared near the end of the tournament. Jakovenko had a total of six decisive games in this tournament. He started with 1.0/3, but recovered impressively. The win against Caruana in round eight opened the tournament for himself and Tomashevsky to try to qualify, and even Gelfand and Karjakin regained chances.

Some years ago it would have been difficult to believe that Nakamura finished a
tournament with no losses - his style used to be prone for many decisive results!

After beating Karjakin in round ten, he realistically had to beat Nakamura to qualify. It was possible that with a draw he would advance, granted that Caruana lost and some other results went his way. Unfortunately for the Russian he is left out of the Candidates yet again, not an unfamiliar scenario for him. Specially heart breaking is that he let go of Gelfand from a winning position in a very important round nine: in the 2008-10 Grand Prix series three spots qualified for the Candidates. Jakovenko finished fourth in that series...

Sometimes, things just don't go your way

Closing Ceremony

The king and queen welcoming people

Getting the prizes ready for the players

Natalia Komarova, governor of Ugra, came to the closing

A relatively large crowd showed up

Three musketeers! Caruana, Nakamura and Jakovenko all finished tied for first with 6.5/11,
but they went through very different routs to get there.

Caruana gets handed the GP series winner's trophy

Well, he gets the small one

But gets to cheer with both. Fabiano Caruana is the 2014-15 GP Series Winner.

Final Standings

Replay All Games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Thanks to RDJLegend and SemolinaChessNut from reddit for some of the facts

Photos from the official website by Kirill Merkurev

Schedule

Links Official tournament site Download all Games in PGN The games 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 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.