Norway Chess Round 10: Firouzja Fires Back, Carlsen Finishes With A Loss

Having already secured victory, GM Magnus Carlsen ended his Altibox Norway Chess tournament with a loss to GM Levon Aronian, who came third in the tournament.

GM Alireza Firouzja finished in an excellent second place as he defeated GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda in the standard game. GM Fabiano Caruana finished his event with an armageddon win vs. GM Aryan Tari.

2020 Norway Chess | Final Standings

Before moving on to the final round recap, it's interesting to check the standings table that includes only the standard games. As it turns out, Aronian was only "beaten" by Firouzja and Carlsen in the armageddon games. Without those and with a normal scoring system, he would have tied for first with the best Sonneborn-Berger score:

2020 Norway Chess | Standard Games Only

After his win against Firouzja in the penultimate round, one of the things Carlsen said was: "Certainly I had many experiences like this. I lost two rook endings against Levon for absolutely no reason. It's part of the growing process."

As if he had jinxed his game in the final round, Carlsen ended his tournament with a loss, in a rook ending, against Aronian. Adding "for absolutely no reason" to that would be too much, but he did have a draw shortly before the end.

Position after 49...b4.

Here, Carlsen surprisingly took the pawn on f6, thereby losing a crucial tempo. Analysis shows that 50.h5 (Aronian), 50.Rg7+ (Kramnik/Polgar) and even 50.g5 (engine) would have drawn here.

GM Vladimir Kramnik was very surprised about Carlsen's mistake. It should be noted that the world champion was down to four minutes and five seconds vs. 21 minutes for Aronian in a phase where there was a 10-second increment.

Kramnik suggested that the world champion needs a "mathematical motivation" to play well in the last round (when here Carlsen had already won the tournament). "Today his play was really bad for his level."

Carlsen hadn't lost with the white pieces in a classical game in almost three years. The last time was on December 10, 2017, against GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the London Chess Classic.

1/2 Lost deservedly in the last round of @NorwayChess today, which luckily did not matter in terms of tournament standings. There certainly were some positive moments, but mostly I felt pretty clueless throughout the tournament. Even long thinks generally resulted in guesses

— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) October 16, 2020

2/2 Nevertheless happy to be playing over the board and classical again, and a huge thanks to the organizer for making it possible and safe for us. Don't know when I'll be playing a classical tournament again, but I'll be eagerly awaiting the opportunity, and try to improve

— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) October 16, 2020

Firouzja bounced back wonderfully from his unfortunate loss to Carlsen the other day. The Iranian teenager beat Duda in a good game, took the three points for a classical win, and finished in second place. In his comments after the game, he showed the ambition of a champion:

"Today I feel happy, but in general I'm a bit disappointed because I was very close to win the whole thing! I guess it happens. I think I played a decent tournament. I got a good result. Except for yesterday's game, I think all the games were of good quality."

Asked what happened against Carlsen, he said: "Yesterday, I lost to myself, I think."

Caruana finished for him a topsy-turvy tournament with an armageddon win vs. Tari. Their standard game saw an interesting exchange sacrifice that Caruana had misjudged.

"I'm a bit surprised," he said. "During the game, I thought this must be a really good position for White after 20.Rxe6. Then it suddenly dawned on me that after 21.Bxh6 Rf7, I'm probably not better at all, not even the slightest bit."

Caruana called his armageddon win "smooth." He was happy to see 17...Nd4 being played as the game became more complicated there, "exactly what I needed to play for a win."

Caruana noted that there was some distraction for him during the tournament. He had been in regular contact with FIDE, which postponed the Candidates yesterday.

"During the tournament we were constantly kind of dealing with the Candidates, wondering if it would happen or not," said Caruana. "The general feeling was that it wouldn't happen, even before it became clear that there was just no way it could happen on November 1."

The American GM considers it a good decision. "I don't think we should be compromising the safety of people to play chess."

The next big event with top grandmasters is the Speed Chess Invitational on Sunday, October 25, when 16 players will compete for two spots in the $100,000 Speed Chess Championship Main Event, which will be held from October 26 to December 13. As one top grandmaster remarked, Chess.com sabotaged the Candidates to stage their Speed Chess Championship in more comfort.

The Norway Chess tournament was a double round-robin with six players taking place October 5-16, 2020, in the Clarion Hotel in Stavanger, Norway. The time control was two hours for all moves with a 10-second increment per move after move 40.

In the case of a draw, the players played an armageddon game about 20 minutes after drawing their standard game. The colors remained the same, and the time control was 10 minutes for White vs. seven minutes for Black (who had draw odds) with an increment of one second per move starting on move 41.

The points system was as follows:

• Victory main game: 3 points
• Loss main game: 0 points
• Draw main game & victory armageddon: 1.5 points
• Draw main game & loss armageddon: 1 point
  
  

See also:

• Carlsen Wins Norway Chess With Round To Spare As Firouzja Blunders In Pawn Endgame
• Norway Chess Round 8: Carlsen Overtakes Firouzja
• Norway Chess Round 7: Firouzja Maintains Lead As Aronian Flags
• Norway Chess Round 6: Revenge For Carlsen, Firouzja Grabs Lead
• Norway Chess Round 5: Duda Ends Carlsen's Unbeaten Streak
• Norway Chess Round 4: Carlsen Finally Overcomes Caruana Again
• Norway Chess Round 3: Aronian Teaches Duda An Endgame Lesson
• Norway Chess: Caruana Sole Leader After Round 2
• Carlsen Beats Aronian In Armageddon As Norway Chess Begins
• Norway Chess Oct. 5-16 With Reduced Field Of Participants