Monday
Nov292021
Caruana vs. MVL Finishes off the Round of 16 in the Speed Chess Championship
Monday, November 29, 2021 at 4:47PM
The last match of the first round, between Fabiano Caruana and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, is now history, and it's time for the quarterfinals, which will start on Thursday (December 2 - all the quarterfinal matches are scheduled to coincide with rest days in the World Championship match). For those who didn't catch the live broadcast but want to watch it without spoilers, I'll post the result in the comments; here are the other results, followed by the quarterfinals schedule:
- Anish Giri vs. Jan-Krzysztof Duda: Giri won 14-12
- Shakhriyar Mamedyarov vs. Ding Liren: Ding won 14-12
- Richard Rapport vs. Alexey Sarana: Rapport won 16.5-14.5
- Alexander Grischuk vs. Nihal Sarin: Sarin won 15.5-10.5
- Levon Aronian vs. Daniil Dubov: Aronian won 15-12
- Hikaru Nakamura vs. Peter Svidler: Nakamura won 22-10 (it was close until the bullet, when, IIRC, Nakamura ran off nine wins in a row at one point)
- Wesley So vs. Jeffery Xiong: So won 18-14
- Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs. Fabiano Caruana: See the comments!
Quarterfinals Pairings:
- Richard Rapport vs. Nihal Sarin: December 2 at 10 a.m. EST/16:00 CET
- Ding Liren vs. Levon Aronian: December 6 at 9 a.m. EST/15:00 CET
- Hikaru Nakamura vs. Anish Giri: December 6 at 1 p.m. EST/19:00 CET
- Wesley So vs. Caruana/MVL: December 9 at 1 p.m. EST/19:00 CET
Reader Comments (1)
Fabiano Caruana eked out a win, 13.5-12.5, and in a surprise the key to his victory was his triumph in the bullet portion. He won that phase 6-3, winning the last three games to complete a brilliant comeback. He did well in the 5'+1" segment, finishing a point ahead, and pushed the lead to three points early in the 3-minute segment. But then he had a terrible stretch, getting outscored by five points to finish two games down entering the bullet. (That stretch included a game he lost in which he had mate in one against MVL; when it rains, it pours.) He'll be an underdog against So, but he was an underdog in this match as well.