MVL and Firouzja reach winners' bracket final

In September 2023, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave managed to get two match wins in a row over Magnus Carlsen to claim overall victory at the AI Cup. The memorable win allowed the Frenchman to reach the Champions Chess Tour Finals, which was eventually won by Carlsen.

MVL beat the Norwegian again in the winners' bracket semifinal of the CrunchLab Masters on Saturday. The match was decided in Armageddon, after all four 'regular' games ended decisively, with MVL winning the sudden-death decider with the black pieces (see analysis of the game below).

In the other semifinal of the winners' bracket, Alireza Firouzja got the better of Jan-Krzysztof Duda to set up an all-French showdown in the final. This match saw three games ending drawn and Firouzja winning the deciding encounter with the black pieces after Duda failed to make the most of a clearly superior position.

In the losers' bracket, Wesley So and Ian Nepomniachtchi knocked out Fabiano Caruana and Dmitry Andreikin, respectively.

Carlsen 0 - 1 Vachier-Lagrave (Armageddon)

Division I pairings

Master Class Vol.11: Vladimir Kramnik

This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) how to successfully organise your games strategically, consequently how to keep y

All games - Division I Placement

Division II: Aronian and Naka knocked down to losers' bracket

Two big names were knocked down to the losers' bracket in Division II, with Jules Moussard beating Levon Aronian and Vladimir Fedoseev beating Hikaru Nakamura on Saturday.

Moussard and Aronian will face Alexander Grischuk and Vidit Gujrathi in the winners' bracket semifinal. While Grischuk obtained a walk-over win over Karthikeyan Murali, Vidit defeated Frederik Svane by a clear 2½-½ score.

Besides Karthikeyan and Svane, Maxim Matlakov and Vladimir Kramnik remain in the race in the losers' bracket.

Svane 0 - 1 Vidit

Division II pairings

Master advanced Tactics and Calculations like a super Grandmaster

The Indian chess grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi with an ELO of over 2700 (June 2023) is one of the best 20 players in the world. For the first time, the sympathetic top player presents himself in a video course. Let a world-class player show you tactical moti

All games - Division II Placement

Division III

Arjun Erigaisi, Daniil Dubov, David Anton and Evgeny Alekseev reached the semifinals of the winners' bracket in Division III.

Division III pairings

All games - Division III Placement

Links

• Official website
• Four ‘regular’ events and a grand finale in this year’s Champions Chess Tour
• Carlsen beats resilient Firouzja, wins Chessable Masters
• Firouzja takes down Carlsen to win Chess.com Classic