GM Alireza Firouzja added one more accolade to his credit as he won the title in Chess.com Grand Swiss (tournament) on Sunday 7th November 2021 in Riga. The France-based player was the only one to complete on 8/11. The games were completed in a draw in the last round. With ties on key matches on the top 13 boards of the FIDE chess.com tournament, Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja qualified together for the 2022 FIDE tournament.
Firouzja steered ahead of all competitors with an impressive 8/11 score. Caruana, who came second, was in a tie with Grigoriy Oparin, but received a better tiebreak score over his Russian competitor. In the women’s segment, Lei Tingjie went victorious in the tournament with a round to spare. Mentioning the second and third winners, Elisabeth Paehtz and Zhu Jiner successfully completed the tournament.
Firouzja : a clear winner
In the tournament, 9 out of 10 players ended in draws and Najer vs Firouzja appeared to be heading the same way. Another tiebreaker would have been disappointing for the young Iranian who was doing well in the middlegame.
Firouzja emerged champion after scoring 8 points out of 11 rounds. Even after losing in round 9 against the 18-year-old Fabiano Caruana, who now represents France, he needed a clear draw in the concluding round to secure a confirmed spot as a 2022 FIDE Chess.com candidate.
For Firouzja the endgame was tricky - he happened to be a pawn up and his opponent Alexei Shirovr blundered at the end. He commented that Shirovr calculates kind of well, and that he himself got lucky as well.
Post the time control, the young GM had an additional rook pawn along with a textbook rook endgame. It might have been an amazing victory, but the defense wasn’t simple either.
Firouzja is the only player with a 5.5 out of 7 in a tournament.
There was a time when Alireza, a 15-year-old at that time, had a 2607 Elo rating and had emerged as Iranian champion. Now, fast-forwarding 3 years, this talented player has climbed up to a whopping fifth place in the global ranking.
Already popular among chess fans, Firouzja has successfully achieved the right to compete for the challenger place in the next World championship. The chess kingdom is looking forward to a tight match ahead where the winner will challenge Ian Nepomniachtchi or Magnus Carlsen.
A pinch of Indian chess
While the 18-year-old Alireza emerged the champion, India’s unbeatable duo D. Harika and Nihal Sarin came as the strongest performers in Riva, Latvia. Among the players who represented India in FIDE Chess.com, 41st-seed player Nihal completed an 18th and scored 6.5 points, garnering a worth of $5,000. The 7th-ranked P. Harikrishna coincidentally scored the same 6.5 points but was positioned as 30th, a place ahead of another Indian player, K.Sasikiran who ended the game with 6 points after losing in 3 games out of 4.
Harika, the 4th-seed, finished with 7 points and held the 5th spot, gaining a worth of $10,000 in the women’s segment.
The tournament confirms spots for 5 players in the 2022 World Championship
The long tournament in Latvia was a successful one as it is rightly said that all is well that ends well. By not cancelling the event, FIDE indeed took a risk that was worth taking. The concluding day had a lot of suspense and tightness going on for hours, especially for Oparin and Firouzja. However, when all the 13 boarders ended in draws, the verdict turned clear. The 5 candidates who have a spot in 2022 Championship in Berlin, in the order of sequence, are:
Jan-Krzysztof Duda - World Cup winner
Sergey Karjakin - World Cup runner-up
Alireza Firouzja - Grand Swiss winner
Fabiano Caruana - Grand Swiss runner-up
Teimour Radjabov - FIDE nominee
The next year's World Championship is expected to be held between February and April 2022 where the above five successful players will be joined by two qualifying candidates from the FIDE Grand Prix and the runner-up from the 2021 World Championship.
Do your kid’s eyes shine bright in front of the chessboard?
If your kids also dream of achieving big in chess, then it’s time to get them started. In order to acquire the right skills and strategies to master this board game, your kids need to learn and practice in a conducive environment.
At Mind Mentorz, we offer systematic chess coaching to mold young minds; tame and train them in the right direction. A leading chess coaching center in Bangalore, Mind mentorz believes that every kid is blessed with a gift and merely needs to be nurtured with care and guidance at the right hands. With a rigorous and disciplined training module, our chess trainers inculcate the passion in our students to help them understand the game in depth. To learn more about our exclusive and bespoke training curriculum, get in touch with us at +91 9606847428.