At 40 years of age, Muscovite GM Alexander Grischuk continues to show his class in rapid and blitz events. Last year, the ever-entertaining grandmaster was the top scorer at the blitz section of the Tata Steel Chess India event, and now he has claimed overall victory at the very competitive Division II of the CrunchLab Masters, an online knockout tournament featuring the likes of Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian and Vidit Gujrathi.
In the division's Grand Final, Grischuk faced Vidit for a second time in the event. The Indian star had knocked Grischuk down to the losers' bracket in the semifinals of the winners' bracket. The eventual champion defeated Nakamura to gain the right for a rematch.
To win the event, Grischuk needed to beat his formidable opponent twice on Tuesday. After trading wins in the 4-game Grand Final, Grischuk prevailed with white in Armageddon to set up a Reset. In the ensuing 2-game match, the Russian obtained a clear 2-0 victory to claim first place, US$ 15.000, and a spot in Division I of the tour's next event.
Grischuk had this to say about Vidit, who was among the 8 participants at this year's Candidates (Grischuk has played the Candidates 5 times, between 2007 and 2020):
He's like a rock - it's very difficult to beat him, so you need to keep pouncing on him to make small holes in the rock, and maybe, eventually, he can collapse.
The winner of Division III was decided rather quickly, as the clear favourite, Arjun Erigaisi, obtained a 2½-½ victory over Israeli representative Evgeny Alekseev.
Arjun, who is having a remarkable year in over-the-board competitions, failed to make it to Divisions I or II in the Play-In stage, but made up for his slow start by winning the still competitive Division III.
Before reaching the Grand Final, Arjun obtained match victories over Read Samedov, Benjamin Bok, David Paravyan and Daniil Dubov.
