Dubai: World champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway emerged triumphant in the World Rapid Chess Championship after a battle of nerves at the Dubai Chess and Culture Club on Wednesday. A tally of 11 points out of 15 rounds was enough for the Norwegian to stamp his class among the 113 players that took part in the tournament.
The final day of the tournament witnessed many intense battles and among them was Carlsen pitted against former world champion and India’s iconic Vishwanathan Anand. Though Carlsen lost the match in the 12th round to the five-time world champion, he bounced back with two wins and pocketed $40,000 out of the total purse of $200,000 as prize money.
In the tie-break between Italy’s Fabiano Caruana and Anand, Caruana won the silver while Anand bagged the bronze. Anand, Caruana, Levon Aronian of Armenia and Alexander Morozevic of Russia finished with 10.5 points apiece to win $24,000 each.
Unaffected by the setback to Anand, Carlsen continued with his aggressive style and won against Yu Yangyi of China in the 13th round. In the 14th round, Carlsen escaped miraculously from a bad position to win against Russia’s Alexander Grischuk. He drew with Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the last round and waited to see the result of other leaders.
Anand, on the other hand, was held to three draws by Caruana, Radjabov and Levon Aronian of Armenia in the last round.
It was a disappointing end for Caruana, who was leading the tournament but lost to Aronian in the penultimate round. Though he bounced back in the last round by beating Le Quang Liem of Vietnam, it was too little too late.
In other matches, GM Alexander Morozevich lost to Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the 12th round only to win three in a row against Alexander Moiseenko of Ukraine, Yu Yangyi of China and a deadly blow to Sergey Karjakin of Russia in the last round.
Six players: Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Grischuk, Teimour Radjabov, Peter Svidler and Evgeny Tomashevsky of Russia and Etienne Bacrot of France finished in a tie with 10 points each. Yu Yangyi and Rauf Mamedov of Azerbaijan followed with 9.5 points each.
The top 24 shared the $200,000 in cash prizes. Tied at 9 points for 14th to 23rd places are Baadur Jobava of Georgia, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son and Le Quang Liem of Vietnam, Eduardo Iturrizaga Bonelli of Venezuela, Sergei Movsesian of Armenia, Gadir Guseinov of Azerbaijan, Zahar Efimenko and Pavel Eljanov of Ukraine, Wang Hao of China and Mikhail Antipov of Russia.