CrunchLabs Masters Play-In: Nepo, Antipov and Nakamura score 7/9

by Carlos Alberto Colodro
7/18/2024 – The first stage of the CrunchLab Masters, the Play-In, took place on Wednesday. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Mikhail Antipov and Hikaru Nakamura were the top scorers in the 9-round Swiss open featuring 118 players. The aforementioned GMs were 3 of the 11 participants who qualified to the Division I Placement stage. Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik was among the 11 qualified participants. | Photo: FIDE

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Kramnik among qualified players to Division I

The third event in this year's Champions Chess Tour is the CrunchLab Masters. The 8-day online tournament kicked off with the Play-In stage, a 9-round Swiss open which featured 118 participants, all GMs or IMs. The top 11 scorers qualified to the Division I Placement stage, set to take place on Thursday.

Out of the 11 qualified players, only Ian Nepomniachtchi, who won the tournament on tiebreak criteria, will skip round 1 in the Placement stage. Nepo will be 1 of 5 players who will get that benefit, together with Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Wesley So, Grigoriy Oparin, and Dmitry Andreikin, who gained that right thanks to their strong showings at the Chess.com Classic.

In the Swiss open, Nepo collected as many points as Hikaru Nakamura and Mikhail Antipov, with all three obtaining 7/9 scores. Out of the three, only Antipov ended the event with a victory in round 9, as he got the better of Arjun Erigaisi with the black pieces.

The remaining 8 qualifiers are Fabiano Caruana, Frederik Svane, Maxim Matlakov, Alexander Grischuk, Vladimir Fedoseev, Vladimir Kramnik, Jules Moussard and Levon Aronian.

Former world champion Kramnik has been using his X account to share statistical analyses (often disavowed by other users) about what he considers to be results that should generate serious suspicions of cheating - notably, his main concern is related to online events with prize funds such as this one.

CrunchLab Chess Masters 2024

CrunchLab Chess Masters 2024

Nepomniachtchi 1 - 0 Bok

A total of 46 players qualified either to the Placement stage in Division II or Division III, with the likes of Vidit Gujrathi, Bogdan-Daniel Deac and Daniil Dubov failing to make it to the top division in this particular event.

CrunchLab Chess Masters 2024

CrunchLab Chess Masters 2024

CrunchLab Chess Masters 2024

...118 players

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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.