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Tata Steel Chess 2022 R13: Karjakin, Praggnanandhaa, Van Foreest Score
Magnus Carlsen with the winner's trophy. Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess.

Tata Steel Chess 2022 R13: Karjakin, Praggnanandhaa, Van Foreest Score

PeterDoggers
| 51 | Chess Event Coverage

GM Sergey Karjakin, GM Praggnanandhaa R., and GM Jorden van Foreest finished their 2022 Tata Steel Chess Tournament with wins in the final round on Sunday. GM Magnus Carlsen had already won the tournament with a round to spare and got a forfeit win, being paired against GM Daniil Dubov, who left the tournament after round 10. GM Arjun Erigaisi finished with a win and scored a splendid 10.5/13 in the Challengers group.

How to watch?
You can find the games of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament here: Masters | Challengers. Chess.com provided daily commentary with exclusive camera footage from the playing hall on Chess.com/TV, Twitch, or YouTube.
Find all of Chess.com's live broadcasts at Youtube.com/chesscomlive.

Although the real tension was gone, with both groups already decided on Saturday, the final round was still nice to follow, with three decisive games in the Masters. That was after two games had finished in a draw very quickly: Rapport-Giri (a theoretical move repetition in the Grunfeld that was identical to Karjakin-Giri earlier in the tournament) and Mamedyarov-Caruana (an early draw offer in a very quiet Queen's Gambit).

With Giri once again joining the Chess.com broadcast, like in that earlier round where he had drawn so quickly, the remainder of the round got much better. Even the drawish Four Knights, played by Karjakin vs. GM Vidit Gujrathi, did not lead to a quick draw, which was unexpected. As he admitted in his interview, Karjakin was again satisfied with a draw for his white game, but when his opponent didn't play accurately enough, it was time to look for more.

Karjakin Vidit Tata 2022
Karjakin vs. Vidit. Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess.

"I went to the line where Black needs to play a few precise moves to make a draw," he said. "He offered me a draw already on move 10 or something, but I thought: OK, if you want a draw, just show me the line! If you just offer, it's not so nice."

However, Vidit "mixed it up" with 20...Re5 (a big inaccuracy according to Karjakin) and got some problems, which started to become bigger and bigger. Karjakin thought Black could have gotten close to equality but wasn't sure how. After Vidit missed White's idea of 27.c4 and 28.Ra5, it was virtually over.

Karjakin: "Yesterday I played one of the worst game in my life and I don't know how I managed to recover after this."

The 2021 winner was never playing for tournament victory, but Van Foreest can still look back at an excellent tournament. The Dutch GM won five games, lost four, and drew four, which means he will win 12 precious Elo points and will be the world number-26 on the next FIDE rating list.

The 22-year-old GM looked tired more or less for the first time this event after winning a very long game vs. GM Sam Shankland, at the end of a long tournament. A positional plus in a London System led to an extra pawn, but the drawing margin was always very high.

Jorden van Foreest 2022
No tournament victory this time, but still an excellent tournament for Jorden van Foreest. Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess.

"I didn't expect I would win at all because his position was very solid, but I just kept on trying because I have an extra pawn," said Van Foreest. "Overall I'm very satisfied. Ending on a high like this is very nice."

The last winner was Praggnanandhaa, with which the debutante finished on a decent 5.5/13 and a shared 11th place with Shankland. Not bad at all for a first time; Carlsen himself tied for last place with 4.5/13 in 2007, 15 years ago, when he had just turned 16. The Indian GM is 16 as well. (Note that back in 2007, Carlsen silenced the doubters a few weeks later by finishing shared second in Linares.)

Praggnanandhaa defeated GM Andrey Esipenko in an interesting clash of the new generation. "I think I played well until move 40 and then I think my technique wasn't that good," said Pragg. "I think I should have finished much earlier."

Praggnanandhaa Esipenko Tata 2022
Praggnanandhaa vs. Esipenko. Photo: Jurriaan Hoefsmit/Tata Steel Chess.

Praggnanandhaa was a bit surprised that his opponent sacrificed an exchange on move 28 but thought it was winning anyway since Black's king is so weak.

GM Nils Grandelius and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda played a very interesting game that saw an old line of the Rauzer Sicilian. For 15 moves, they followed a game that was played over 50 years ago. Their own game could have seen all three results and, in the end, a draw was perhaps the best of the three.

"We had more fun than some of the others at least, that's for sure," said Grandelius. "To be honest, I had just missed this idea that he can just play 24…f6 and let me take his bishop on g5. After this I felt I should be doing quite badly, so it was a very easy decision to go for 27.Bxg7."

He didn't need to play on the final day, but Carlsen did pick up his winner's trophy at the closing ceremony and said: "I really didn't play so well the last couple of years that I played here and I was really motivated to get this title back. I'm thrilled to have been able to come here, first of all, because it's not obvious at all that a tournament can be held under these circumstances and I know it was not easy for anybody who organized it. I am grateful to be here and very happy with my stay and my play and the final result."

Final Standings Masters

# Fed Name Rtg Perf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 Pts SB
1 Carlsen 2865 2900 1 1 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 9.5/13
2 Mamedyarov 2767 2816 0 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 1 ½ 1 ½ ½ 8.0/13 49
3 Rapport 2763 2816 0 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 0 ½ ½ 1 1 1 8.0/13 47.25
4 Giri 2772 2788 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 1 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 7.5/13
5 Karjakin 2743 2763 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 0 ½ ½ 1 0 1 ½ ½ 7.0/13 45.25
6 Van Foreest 2702 2766 ½ 0 0 1 0 0 ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 ½ 7.0/13 41.75
7 Esipenko 2714 2738 ½ ½ ½ 0 1 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 6.5/13 42.75
8 Caruana 2792 2733 0 ½ 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 1 ½ 6.5/13 37.75
9 Duda 2760 2709 ½ 0 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 6.0/13 39.25
10 Vidit 2727 2711 ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 1 0 1 1 6.0/13 35.5
11 Shankland 2708 2686 ½ ½ ½ 0 1 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ 5.5/13 36
12 Praggnanandhaa 2612 2692 0 0 0 ½ 0 0 1 0 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 5.5/13 30
13 Grandelius 2672 2632 ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 ½ 0 ½ 0 1 4.5/13
14 Dubov 2720 2565 0 ½ 0 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 0 3.5/13

Erigaisi finished his tournament in style, winning his last game and setting his performance rating just over 2800. That confirmed one more time that he is ready for the Masters in 2023.

While he had shown great play with the bishop pair in his game with GM Surya Ganguly, in this last game Erigaisi knew his way with a knight as well, like the greatest of all Indian players.

Arjun Erigiaisi
We'll see Arjun Erigaisi back next year. Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess.

Final Standings Challengers

# Fed Name Rtg Perf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 Pts SB
1 Erigaisi 2632 2804 ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1 ½ 1 1 10.5/13
2 Nguyen 2613 2667 ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 1 8.5/13 51.5
3 Bjerre 2586 2669 0 0 1 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 8.5/13 50
4 Jumabayev 2631 2610 ½ ½ 0 0 1 ½ ½ 1 1 ½ 1 ½ ½ 7.5/13 45.25
5 L'Ami 2622 2611 ½ ½ 0 1 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 7.5/13 44.75
6 Van Foreest 2539 2589 ½ ½ ½ 0 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 0 1 ½ ½ 7.0/13 44.75
7 Murzin 2519 2591 0 ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 7.0/13 39.25
8 Warmerdam 2607 2558 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ 1 ½ 1 6.5/13
9 Ganguly 2627 2530 0 ½ 0 0 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 1 6.0/13
10 Dardha 2532 2510 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 0 1 ½ 0 1 ½ 1 5.5/13
11 Maurizzi 2502 2456 0 0 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 0 1 0 ½ 0 4.5/13 28.75
12 Shuvalova 2516 2455 ½ ½ ½ 0 0 0 0 0 ½ 0 1 ½ 1 4.5/13 26.75
13 Vogel 2452 2429 0 0 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 4.0/13
14 Zhu 2478 2395 0 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 3.5/13

All games round 13


Previous reports:

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”

Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!

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