At 18, Nodirbek Abdusattorov has already become a household name in the elite circuit. A few days before making his debut at the Norway Chess super-tournament, the Uzbek star won the third event of the 2023 Champions Chess Tour, as he scored a convincing 2½-1½ victory over Fabiano Caruana in the Grand Final. This year, Abdusattorov has already participated in the Tata Steel Masters (he finished in sole second place) and in the WR Chess Masters (he was one of the six players who scored 4/9 points).
Abdusattorov did not play a single Armageddon tiebreaker throughout the 5-day online event. On his way to overall victory, he beat Jules Moussard (2½-½), Jorden van Foreest (2½-1½) and Caruana (twice by the same 2½-1½ score). Both matches against Caruana were definitely hard-fought, but the youngster’s poise under pressure was what ended up giving him the two match wins.
Besides the $30,000 first prize, Abdusattorov gained 150 tour points and, more importantly, the right to participate in the tour’s concluding in-person event set to take place in December. Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, the winners of the two previous events, have already qualified to the series’ finals.
This is the second consecutive event that sees Caruana losing the Grand Final. His strong performances in the online series — including his winning Division II in the Airthings Masters — have left him in second place in the tour overall standings.
Abdusattorov defeated Caruana in game 4 of their Grand Final match. The score was tied and the youngster had the black pieces.
Much like Abdusattorov in Division I, Vladimir Fedoseev won all his matches to claim first place in Division II. Unlike his Uzbek colleague, though, Fedoseev did need to win a couple of Armageddon deciders before grabbing the title. And he did it twice against the same opponent: the ever-dangerous Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
Fedoseev had knocked Mamedyarov down to the losers’ bracket on the first day action, and met the elite GM again in the Grand Final. To reach the deciding match of the event, the eventual champion defeated David Anton, Raunak Sadhwani and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son.
Maintaining the trend from the other two divisions, the winner of Division III also needed to beat the same opponent twice to claim first place. Alan Pichot from Argentina twice upset Pentala Harikrishna to win the event.
Harikrishna had been knocked down to the losers’ bracket by Pichot in the winners’ bracket semifinals, and then climbed his way up to the top bracket by beating the over-performing Denis Lazavik — Lazavik had defeated Francisco Vallejo and Gata Kamsky in previous rounds.
