Vachier-Lagrave Wins CrunchLabs Masters After Defeating Firouzja In Armageddon

GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won Division I of the CrunchLabs Masters 2024 after defeating GM Alireza Firouzja in the Grand Final. After four draws, he won on demand in the armageddon game to claim $30,000, 100 tour points, and a return to the season-ending live Finals.

As runner-up, Firouzja still earns $20,000, 80 tour points, and a spot in Division I of the next event. Firouzja already qualified for the CCT Finals by winning the Chess.com Classic. You can catch up on the winners of Divisions II and III in the previous report, as those Grand Finals had already concluded. 

 Division I Bracket

Division I: Vachier-Lagrave 3-2 Firouzja

Vachier-Lagrave won their previous encounter in the Winners Final with an undefeated 2.5-0.5 score. He came out on the other side of the second match again without having lost a single game against his countryman.

All four regular games ended in draws before Vachier-Lagrave finally won with the white pieces in armageddon. Still, Vachier-Lagrave said it was a much closer match than their previous one, and Firouzja's biggest chance came in game three.

Firouzja targeted Vachier-Lagrave's well-known Grunfeld repertoire with a Colle Zukertort setup but got nowhere in game one, which was a nearly perfect game from both sides. He would repeat the opening and show a stronger idea in his next white game, however.

🤯 98% accuracy by both sides in game one.https://t.co/r9KJNzLSJP#ChessChamps pic.twitter.com/3t5JW8HLYE

— chess24 (@chess24com) July 24, 2024

Vachier-Lagrave, with the white pieces, is one of the last elite players to continue trying to prove an advantage in the Berlin endgame. It was actually with this opening that he won the only decisive game in the match, and he said, "Clearly the lesson of the day is I should keep playing the endgame and not go Re1 or something else." He explained further that the fact that others have given up actually helps him:

If everyone was playing the [Berlin] endgame then it would be really tough to get [an advantage] because everyone would have more experience on how to play it from the black side. This is the one big edge I have over almost everyone else.

MVL on the Berlin endgame:

"Clearly the lesson of the day is I should keep playing the endgame and not go Re1 or something else."#ChessChamps pic.twitter.com/zOTmYJ4QSG

— chess24 (@chess24com) July 24, 2024

In game two, Vachier-Lagrave gained an advantage in the Berlin endgame after Firouzja's 13...Bb4? put the bishop on a loose square, but it was short-lived. Later, Firouzja sacrificed a piece and the players agreed to a draw two moves later. It wouldn't be the last Berlin endgame in this match, however...

Things really heated up around game three, which was Firouzja's clearest chance to win a game in the match. In between games, Vachier-Lagrave said he had a quick look at the line from game one and prepared 6...b6: "I equalized more or less, but I could see some potential for unpleasantness, but I missed this h4 move." Suddenly, Firouzja had developed an attack.

Had White kept queens on the board with 16.Qg3!, the computer already claims a winning advantage with a one-sided attack. In the game, he had some pressure after the queen trade, but it fizzled out into a rook endgame.

Vachier-Lagrave deviated from the Berlin endgame with 6.Nxe5 in the fourth game, which ended in a draw, and he returned to his roots in the final armageddon game, which he had to win with White.

He achieved an advantage in the middlegame, but Firouzja successfully defended against the worst of it. In the following position, Vachier-Lagrave played the only move to keep the game going, 37.f5!, while admitting he "was pretty sure there's not only a way to defend for Ali but also maybe a way to activate his pawns on the queenside."

While Firouzja was fine on the board, he only had two minutes left with no increment. Vachier-Lagrave said, "I was never fully certain [about winning chances] until Ali was going down to like 40 seconds, and then his position was already too difficult to defend." GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the full Game of the Day below.

It was a convincing match victory from Vachier-Lagrave, who, on his way to winning the tournament, took down GMs Dmitry Andreikin, Magnus Carlsen, and Firouzja (twice). The former world number-two in classical chess has dropped down to number 21 on the live rating list, but he says he's feeling in good form lately.

"In general I've been playing better. Somewhere I started thinking a lot better," he said, mentioning that even though he drew all nine of his classical games in Bucharest a few weeks ago, he could have won somewhere between two to four of them and that he felt his form was coming back.

In his matchup against Firouzja, he says he likes that "Alireza never backs down from a fight... and sometimes he's maybe a little bit unprepared for these positions," later adding, "I try not to burn my bridges against him and sometimes he tends to do it on his own and then I'm ready to punish."

I try not to burn my bridges against him and sometimes he tends to do it on his own.

—Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

He shared that his favorite streamer is NM Kevin Bordi (Blitzstream) in French. He doesn't watch English content often, but he recommended GM Daniel Naroditsky's, saying, "I like the flow of his thoughts because the main, more popular streamers they don't really want to explain... if you want to learn something, I would recommend Danya's channel more than any other one."

As for what's next, Vachier-Lagrave will be playing in the Speed Chess Championship starting on Thursday, and his match against GM Hans Niemann is scheduled for July 31. He intends to qualify for the SCC Finals held in Paris this September. Besides that, in August, he'll be in St. Louis for the last two events of the Grand Chess Tour, will play in the Olympiad in Budapest in September, and will participate in the Global Chess League in London in October.

Of course, he has a seat in Division I of the last CCT event, and he can now play without the pressure of having to qualify for the Finals.

Division I Prizes

Below, you can find the tour standings, where Firouzja has now overtaken Carlsen in total earnings and tour points. The top three have already qualified for the Finals, so Nepomniachtchi leads by tour points. Noticeably, GMs Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura are numbers 16 and 17 on the list, with just one CCT event left to qualify for the Finals. That last event is scheduled to begin on September 25.

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 started 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:

• • Grischuk Beats Vidit Twice To Win Division II, Arjun Tops Division III With Game To Spare
  • Firouzja Neutralizes Nepomniachtchi's Killer Prep, Sets Up All-French Grand Final
  • Vachier-Lagrave Reaches Div I Grand Final As Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi Set Up Repeat Clash
  • Vachier-Lagrave Surpasses Carlsen, Sets Up All-French Winners Final With Firouzja
  • Firouzja Recovers After 9-Move Loss, Joins Carlsen, Vachier-Lagrave, Duda In Winners
  • Caruana, Wesley So, Nepomniachtchi, Duda, Andreikin Advance To Division I
  • Nepomniachtchi Wins Play-in On Tiebreaks Over Nakamura, Antipov
  • Announcing The 2024 CrunchLabs Masters, Champions Chess Tour's Third Even