Caruana, Wesley So, Nepomniachtchi, Duda, Andreikin Advance To Division I

GMs Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, and Dmitry Andreikin won their matches on day two of the CrunchLabs Masters 2024 to make it into Division I. They join the players who qualified through the last Champions Chess Tour event: GMs Alireza Firouzja, Magnus Carlsen, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

In Division II Placement, six players won their matches to advance to Division II. We will look at Azerbaijani GM Vasif Durarbayli's sweet rook sacrifice against GM Oleksandr Bortnyk.

Another 20 players won their matches in Division III. One of those players was Serbian GM Velimir Ivic, who made it all the way to Division I in the Chess.com Classic. On Thursday, he entered Division III after sweeping GM Nikita Meshkovs 3-0.

The first day of division play begins on Friday, July 19, starting at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m.

Division I Bracket

• Division Placement: Format Explained
• Division I Placement: Moussard Shuts Nakamura Out, Favorites Mostly Prevail In Round 2
• Division II Placement: Durarbayli Sacrifices The Rooooooooook
• Division III Placement: Ivic Scores The Only 3-0 Sweep

Division Placement: Format Explained

Day two of this seven-day tournament features the Division Placement stage. Based on their results in the Swiss on day one (with the exception of four players who qualified through the previous CCT event), players were sorted into three sections, Division Placement I through III. 

In Divisions I and II, participants played two matches. The first was a two-game match, the second a four-game match (with a potential armageddon tiebreak). Players who won both of their matches will play in the equivalent division in the next phase.

For example, if a player in Division II Placement wins both matches, they make it into Division II, while if they lose just one match they're bumped down to Division III. Division Placement III featured only one round and players were eliminated if they lost.

Division I Placement: Moussard Shuts Nakamura Out, Favorites Mostly Prevail In Round 2

The biggest story of round one was GM Jules Moussard's convincing victory over GM Hikaru Nakamura, with a 1.5-0.5 score.

Round 1: Moussard Shuts Nakamura Out Of Division I

Moussard relegated Nakamura to Division II in the very first round. After a tame draw in the first game, Nakamura sacrificed a pawn in game two but ended up defending a clearly worse position. Nakamura's one of the game's greatest defenders, but 28...Be6? was an uncharacteristic mistake that allowed White to trade queens into an endgame up three pawns.

GM Maxim Matlakov sacrificed several pawns against GM Vladimir Fedoseev in game one, but the latter defended the attack to win with Black. He drew with White to win the match in the next game.

The only match to go to armageddon was GM Vladimir Kramnik vs. GM Mikhail Antipov, after the former world champion lost game one but won on demand to recover. While Kramnik achieved a positional advantage in the final game, Antipov broke out of the bind and even won the game when clocks got low.

Kramnik achieved a positional advantage, but Antipov defended and ultimately won the armageddon!

The former world champion left the game with 27 seconds left.https://t.co/Z7sHlo6C8u#ChessChamps pic.twitter.com/XVgA4BLcgL

— chess24 (@chess24com) July 18, 2024

Players who finished higher in the Swiss on the previous day chose their opponents, and Caruana shared his dilemma before the game:

I had a tough choice yesterday because I had to choose between Grischuk, between Levon, and between Fedoseev, and I really wasn't sure what the right decision was there. I kind of went with my gut... [Between Grischuk and Fedoseev] Grischuk is perhaps a little bit more established, but I also prefer players I'm a bit more familiar with, and with Grischuk we've played so many times."

With hindsight, we can say the plan worked.

GM Alexander Grischuk started to go wrong once he had three minutes against Caruana's eight. The seemingly innocuous 13...a6? was surprisingly a straight-up losing move, and though Caruana missed the engine-best 14.Rfc1!, he still won a pawn and later converted. 

GM Levon Aronian demonstrated the aesthetic maneuver of ...Rae8-Bd8-Ba5 to equalize in the Sicilian Najdorf, and much later GM Frederik Svane blundered a critical pawn when under pressure.

Round 2: Favorites Mostly Prevail

The matches in the second round were four games. With the exception of So vs. Aronian or Andreikin vs. Fedoseev, where there wasn't really a clear favorite, the super-GMs won on all the other boards.

Moussard's celebrations came to an end in round two. In the first game, Nepomniachtchi found 44.f3!, the only winning move (and only move for any advantage), and it won a piece:

Nepomniachtchi won the second game, blundered a piece in the third, but still managed to stop the bleeding and close the match with a 2.5-1.5 score.

Andreikin vs. Fedoseev was one of the most heated exchanges, and Andreikin's victory in the first game was an absolute masterclass in positional play. GM Rafael Leitao presents the Game of the Day below.

Both of Duda's wins, in his 2.5-0.5 match victory against Antipov, took under 30 moves. In the first game, Antipov must have overlooked the final move of the game, 23.b4!, which prevented his idea of ...Qe1+ at the end of the line.

So drew the first two games against Aronian and then won the last two. The first victory was in a rook endgame, while the second saw Aronian collapse in a must-win situation, with three seconds against 50.

Last but not least, Caruana dispatched his second, Oparin, with one win in the third game and three draws, despite an "unnecessary" (his word) pawn blunder in the last game. Caruana's win was a contender for our Game of the Day, and he made it look easy once his b-pawn started rolling down the board.

"It's good to finally be back in Division I after a long break," said Caruana, who's surprisingly playing in the highest division for the first time this season. His preview for the match against Firouzja is exciting: "I like playing Alireza because it's always a huge fight. He's a very ambitious player, he's a very sharp player, so you know what you're getting.

Caruana on his Division I pairing tomorrow: "I like playing @AlirezaFirouzja because it's always a huge fight. He's a very ambitious player, he's a very sharp player, so you know what you're getting."#ChessChamps pic.twitter.com/HyJXIDoety

— chess24 (@chess24com) July 18, 2024

The other match no chess fan will want to miss is Carlsen vs. Nepomniachtchi, a rematch from their 2021 and almost-2023 world championship encounters.

Division II Placement: Durarbayli Sacrifices The Rooooooooook 

Durarbayli defeated Bortnyk 2.5-1.5, and his win in the first game featured a stunning rook sacrifice for a decisive attack. Black's knight moved for the first time in the game on move 26, and he resigned two moves later.

Also notable, among many storylines here, is that Indian GM Abhimanyu Puranik upset his countryman and world number-four GM Arjun Erigaisi with a 2-0 sweep, though he was ejected from Division II by GM Alan Pichot in the next round. Both Indian GMs will look to make a comeback in Division III.

Division II Bracket

Division III Placement: Ivic Scores The Only 3-0 Sweep

Ivic was the only player to score a 3-0 sweep in Division III Placement. In his first game, he found a cute refutation to White's losing move 34.Nc3?. Can you?

Division III Placement Results

Division III Bracket

The 2024 CrunchLabs Masters is the third of the Champions Chess Tour's four events and determines one of the players who'll make it to the in-person CCT Finals. The event starts on July 17 at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m. IST and features a $300,000 prize fund.

Previous coverage:

• • Nepomniachtchi Wins Play-in On Tiebreaks Over Nakamura, Antipov
  • Announcing The 2024 CrunchLabs Masters, Champions Chess Tour's Third Even