Magnus Carlsen survived a blunder against Hikaru Nakamura in the first round of the day to win the Skilling Open prelims, but the main drama was elsewhere. 17-year-old Alireza Firouzja seemed to have wrapped up a quarterfinal spot with a stunning three wins in a row, but losses in the last two rounds meant heartbreak. After leading for two days, Anish Giri only scraped into the quarterfinals in 8th place and now faces Carlsen, while world no. 2 Ding Liren, who went into the day in 2nd place, is also out. 

There was joy and despair on the final day of the Skilling Open Prelims, as the 16 players battled to claim eight places in the quarterfinals. No-one summed up the joy better than Levon Aronian, who bounced back from a bad day to win three games and ultimately finish in 5th place. He celebrated with his dog Ponchik!

Elsewhere there was a huge relief for Anish Giri, who went into his final round game, Black against Ding Liren, with his tournament survival hanging by a thread. It would have been a shocker to get knocked out after leading for the first two days, but the Dutch star got the draw he ultimately needed. French no. 1 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave also made it in by the finest of margins.

The most dramatic story, however, was that of 17-year-old Alireza Firouzja. For the first three rounds, he was on fire, taking down Ding Liren, Anish Giri, and Sergey Karjakin to take the joint lead with Magnus Carlsen with just two rounds to go. He was garnering high praise. 

It seemed just a formality that he’d reach the knockout stage, but in the penultimate round, he ran into a killer tactic from Hikaru Nakamura. Then in the final round, when a draw with White against Liem Quang Le would have been enough for him to qualify, he again fell to defeat.

After Liem’s win, it turned out both players were the unlucky ones to lose out in a 5-way tie with Teimour Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Anish Giri since in that mini-league Teimour scored 3/5, Maxime and Anish 2/5, and Alireza and Le only 1.5/5.

The final standings look as follows, with the quarterfinalists on the left:

The no. 1 finisher plays the no. 8, the no. 2 the no. 7, and so on, which produced the following mouth-watering ties.

There’s no rest day, with the matches beginning Wednesday at 18:00 CET. Each clash is held over two days, with a 4-game rapid match each day. If the score is 1:1 after those two matches a playoff will be held with two blitz games and then Armageddon.

Text and photo: chess24.com 

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