Grand Chess Tour - Leuven: Wesley So wins Rapid stage

The Leuven tournament of the Grand Chess Tour is running from June 28 to July 2 in Leuven, Belgium. It is a combination of Rapid and Blitz games. The ten participants are Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Viswanathan Anand, Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Vassily Ivanchuk, and Baadur Jobava. They will play nine rapid games, three a day, from June 28–30. Each day the games will start at 14:00h, 15:30h and 17:00h European Standard Summer Time. The Blitz tournament is on July 1-2, with nine rounds on each day, starting at 14:00h. The total prize fund is $150,000!

Note that the event is using the Bronstein mode: the players have 25 minutes for all the moves of a rapid game, and a ten second delay per move. This means that the clock does not run for ten seconds – the point is that you cannot accumulate time by playing very quickly in the Bronstein Mode.

Round 7

All photos by Lennart Ootes

The final stretch of the rapid part almost started with another win for the leader. Wesley So did blunder a pawn on move 19, but Ian Nepomniachtchi missed his chance, and, instead, went for a rather questionable pawn push. His d6-pawn looked about to fall, but So erred on move 29, allowing Nepo to show his magic. Out of nowhere White was able to force a drawn queen ending.

Anish Giri-Magnus Carlsen was a solid draw, so all eyes focused on Vishy Anand-MVL, the incredible battle it was.

Vishy Anand - MVL

Vladimir Kramnik added another blow to Baadur Jobava's misery, while LevonAronian couldn't make headway against Vassily Ivanchuk's steady play.

Round 8

Kramnik won his second in a row, and climbed out of the cellar. Ivanchuk probably had a draw at the end, but fighting against a passed pawn in a queen ending is never easy.

Jobava finally lit the scoreboard by accurately holding a draw against Giri in another queen endgame, where he could afford to lose all of his pawns, except for the one on h6.

The highlight of the round was the game that almost became Vishy's revenge for Chennai and Sochi.

Magnus Carlsen - Vishy Anand

From the opening moves So had a great game going against Aronian.  Wesley's fianchettoed bishops and flexible central pawns looked straight out of Richard Reti's vision of the future. It all should have ended in the middlegame, but White made a wrong decision by self-pinning his bishop, which provided Black with some counterchances. Wesley was glad to emerge with Rook and Bishop vs Queen, with plenty of extra pawns. After some adventures in time trouble he brought home an important win.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave made an amazing comeback in Paris thanks to his blitz skills. Will history repeat itself?

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave - Ian Nepomniachtchi

Round 9

The final round almost felt anticlimactic. The exhausted warriors fought at half-speed In Nepo-Carlsen, Ivanchuk-So and Giri-Kramnik. Anand punched in the expected win over Jobava, which left one game to determine the standings.

Maxime had a chance to catch Wesley, but he needed a win with Black against Aronian. The problem was not only the strength of the opponent, but also the fact that so far in this tournament Levon had responded to losses by winning the very next game. The pattern held, as MVL got in trouble early, and despite heroic resistance he went down, although it took 88 moves for Aronian to convert.

Looking at the standings we see familiar names at the top. Knowing Magnus and Maxime's blitz skills, it'll take a good effort from Wesley to keep his lead.

The disappointment of the tournament, aside from Jobava's horrendous result, is Nepo's mediocre showing. The three losses he had suffered could have easily been doubled to six, due to the general unsoundness of Ian's play here.

Ian Nepomniachtchi

To be fair, I'd remind the reader that Nepo came to the tournament straight from the World Team Championship in Khanty, which represented a major change in all aspects, from the time control to the quality of opposition to a time zone difference of 4 hours. I still hope to see him do well in blitz.

Final rapid crosstable*

(Click for full size)

*Note: All rapid games are worth double
*Note: FIDE Rapid ratings are used in crosstable with appropriate ratings gains and losses.

Links

• Official tournament site
• All Rapid games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.