CrunchLabs Masters: Moussard beats Nakamura

by Carlos Alberto Colodro
7/19/2024 – Day 2 of the CrunchLab Masters saw players fighting to enter the double-elimination knockouts in the Division Placement stage. At the end of the day, five well-known names qualified to the Division I knockout, where they will join Magnus Carlsen and co. as they battle for a spot in this year's end-of-season Tour Finals. A few elite GMs were unable to make it to the top division, though, including online-chess expert Hikaru Nakamura. | Photo: FIDE / Mark Livshitz
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Carlsen to face Nepo in Division I

The Division Placement stage for Division I took place on Thursday and featured two rounds, with five matches taking place in round 1, and five matches taking place in round 2 - the winners in round 1 faced players who had qualified directly for round 2 either by winning the Play-In (i.e. Ian Nepomniachtchi) or thanks to their strong performances at the Chess.com Classic, the previous event of the online series.

A major upset was seen in the first round, as French GM Jules Moussard obtained a 1½-½ victory over Hikaru Nakamura to knock down the famous streamer to Division II. This round also saw Alexander Grischuk, Vladimir Kramnik, Maxim Matlakov and Frederik Svane falling out of the race to reach Division I.

Moussard nonetheless failed to qualify for the top division's knockout, as he was defeated by Nepomniachtchi in the second round.

Much like the Frenchman, round-1 winners Levon Aronian, Vladimir Fedoseev and Mikhail Antipov also failed to make it to the Division I knockout. In fact, the only player who made it to the Division I double-elimination bracket after winning two matches on Thursday was Fabiano Caruana, who clinched victories over Grischuk and Grigoriy Oparin.

Wesley So, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Dmitry Andreikin also won in round 2, which means all eight players in the Division I bracket belong to the world top 20 in the live blitz ratings list.

Division I pairings

All games - Division I Placement

Division II: Arjun and Lazavik do not make it through

Similarly to Division I, but with 18 players instead of 15, two rounds of matches decided who would qualify for the double-elimination bracket in Division II.

The two biggest names that were unable to make it through were Arjun Erigaisi and Denis Lazavik. While Arjun has been playing formidably in open OTB tournaments to amazingly reach the fourth spot in the world ranking, Lazavik has made a name for himself as an outstanding online player, particularly thanks to his performances in the Champions Chess Tour events.

Arjun was defeated by his compatriot Abhimanyu Puranik in round 1 - Abhimanyu was then defeated by Alan Pichot - while Lazavik lost to Vidit Gujrathi in the second round.

Vidit and Pichot will be 2 of the 16 participants who will play in the Division II knockout starting Friday. They will be joined by the likes of Nakamura, Aronian and Kramnik, who failed to succeed in the Division I Placement stage.

Division II pairings

All games - Division II Placement

Division III

Besides the aforementioned Arjun, a few well-known veterans will play in the tournament's Division III, including Gata Kamsky, Erwin l'Ami and Aleksey Dreev.

Division III pairings

All games - Division III Placement

Links

Carlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.