Vachier-Lagrave Wins 11th Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix
GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the 11th Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix. The French top grandmaster beat Russian GM Maksim Chigaev 2-0 in the knockout final. GM Haik Martirosyan of Armenia continues to lead the overall Grand Prix standings.
The next Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix will be played on August 18 at 10 a.m. Pacific / 19:00 Central Europe.
The 11th Speed Chess Grand Prix tournament was held on Tuesday, August 11, with 758 participants. Uzbekistan's GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov and India's GM Murali Karthikeyan both finished on 9/10 in the Swiss part.
The live broadcast of the tournament.
We know that Abdusattorov (@ChessWarrior7197) is a fantastic online blitz player, as we saw for instance on July 21 when he won the Swiss segment alone, also with 9/10. Karthikeyan (@youngKID) was a bit of a surprise—perhaps even to himself—as he started with a perfect 8/8. No other player could follow him even for seven rounds in doing that.
His eighth consecutive win was against none other than GM Alexander Grischuk (@Grischuk), whose Berlin Wall crumbled down quickly when he failed to coordinate his pieces.
Fan-favorite GM Alireza Firouzja came half a point short to make it to the final eight but, like almost every week, he was involved in some wild fights. First, in a mutual time scramble he swindled Dutch IM Max Warmerdam, who had him on the ropes in round two:
Three rounds later it was Firouzja's turn to get swindled as even two queens were not enough to find a quick knockout blow:
And there was also a round-three upset as Greg Shahade, the well-known American IM and main organizer of the PRO Chess League, beat the world number-two:
NBD, just beat @FabianoCaruana in Round 3 of #titledtuesday on @chesscom 😎 pic.twitter.com/RKkvhw0aFN
— greg shahade (@GregShahade) August 11, 2020
Live coverage of my glorious win against Fabiano 😇😇😇https://t.co/fgIPENpvjG
— greg shahade (@GregShahade) August 11, 2020
The eight players who qualified for the knockout part were the aforementioned GMs Abdusattorov, Chigaev Karthikeyan, Grischuk, MVL, Svidler, and also GMs Vladimir Onischuk and Sergey Grigoriants.
August 11 Speed Chess Grand Prix | Swiss Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rk | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Score | SB |
| 1 | GM | ChessWarrior7197 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | 9 | 60.75 | |
| 2 | GM | youngKID | Karthikeyan Murali | 9 | 55.25 | |
| 3 | GM | PSvidler | Peter Svidler | 8.5 | 53.75 | |
| 4 | GM | Onischuk_V | Vladimir Onischuk | 8.5 | 51.25 | |
| 5 | GM | Fandorine | Maksim Chigaev | 8.5 | 50.25 | |
| 6 | GM | sergiochess83 | Sergey Grigoriants | 8.5 | 48.25 | |
| 7 | GM | LyonBeast | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 8.5 | 47.75 | |
| 8 | GM | Grischuk | Alexander Grischuk | 8.5 | 42.25 | |
| 8 | GM | Beca95 | Aleksandar Indjic | 8.5 | 42.25 | |
| 10 | IM | swimmerchess | Siva Mahadevan | 8.5 | 40.5 | |
| 11 | GM | Openyagami | Vladimir Belous | 8 | 51.75 | |
| 12 | GM | vladislavkovalev | Vladislav Kovalev | 8 | 47.75 | |
| 13 | GM | Firouzja2003 | Alireza Firouzja | 8 | 47.5 | |
| 13 | IM | Gabix_94 | Gabor Nagy | 8 | 47.5 | |
| 13 | GM | Azeryahu | Gyula Pap | 8 | 47.5 | |
| 16 | GM | erichansen | Eric Hansen | 8 | 46.5 | |
| 17 | GM | Msb2 | Matthias Bluebaum | 8 | 46 | |
| 18 | GM | 2Vladimirovich90 | Dmitry Andreikin | 8 | 44.25 | |
| 19 | GM | chito89 | Axel Bachmann | 8 | 43.5 | |
| 20 | GM | RaunakSadhwani2005 | Raunak Sadhwani | 8 | 42 |
After beating Karthikeyan 1.5-0.5, Vachier-Lagrave met Svidler in the semifinal. The Frenchman won the first game, which was a Grunfeld clash between two super-experts in this opening. Sadly, a huge blunder ended this game prematurely:
The key moment in the final is the following in the first game. MVL missed (or perhaps decided against) a tactic, but then Chigaev missed a chance himself and lost material instead:
MVL won the $1,000 first prize and 12 GP points while Chigaev took second ($500 and eight GP points). Abdusattorov and Svidler both won $200 and four GP points, while the losing quarterfinalists each earned $100 and two GP points.
WGM Aleksandra Maltsevskaya (@Sanyura) won the $100 prize for being the top-scoring female player.
Below are the current Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix standings. At the end of the season, the players with the four best scores will advance to the Speed Chess Championship to be hosted later this year.
Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix | Standings After August 11 (Top 20)
| # | Fed | Title | Name | Username | Swiss Points |
Bonus Points |
Overall Points |
| 1 | GM | Haik Martirosyan | @Micki-taryan | 51.5 | 28 | 79.5 | |
| 2 | GM | Hikaru Nakamura | @Hikaru | 51 | 28 | 79 | |
| 3 | GM | Vladislav Kovalev | @vladislavkovalev | 66 | 8 | 74 | |
| 4 | GM | Parham Maghsoodloo | @Parhamov | 51 | 20 | 71 | |
| 5 | GM | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | @LyonBeast | 33.5 | 28 | 61.5 | |
| 6 | GM | Vladislav Artemiev | @Sibelephant | 33.5 | 24 | 57.5 | |
| 7 | GM | Alexander Grischuk | @Grischuk | 49.5 | 6 | 55.5 | |
| 8 | GM | Dmitry Andreikin | @2Vladimirovich90 | 41.5 | 14 | 55.5 | |
| 9 | GM | Nordibek Abdusattorov | @ChessWarrior7197 | 42 | 10 | 52 | |
| 10 | GM | Sergey Karjakin | @SergeyKarjakin | 41.5 | 10 | 51.5 | |
| 11 | GM | Alireza Firouzja | @Firouzja2003 | 40.5 | 10 | 50.5 | |
| 12 | GM | Grigoriy Oparin | @OparinGrigoriy | 34 | 16 | 50 | |
| 13 | GM | Vladimir Fedoseev | @Bigfish1995 | 33 | 14 | 47 | |
| 14 | GM | Raunak Sadhwani | @RaunakSadhwani2005 | 40 | 4 | 44 | |
| 15 | GM | Maksim Chigaev | @Fandorine | 32.5 | 10 | 42.5 | |
| 16 | IM | Hans Niemann | @IMHansNiemann | 40 | 2 | 42 | |
| 17 | GM | Giga Kuparadze | @GigaQuparadze | 40.5 | 0 | 40.5 | |
| 18 | GM | Fabiano Caruana | @FabianoCaruana | 34 | 6 | 40 | |
| 19 | IM | Tuan Minh Le | @wonderfultime | 33.5 | 4 | 37.5 | |
| 20 | GM | Peter Svidler | @PSvidler | 25 | 12 | 37 |
Games final eight
The Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix is presented by Gambit, where you can play classic games like Reversi, Backgammon, and Oh Ship with players from around the world.
More information about the Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix can be found here.
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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