GM Vladislav Artemiev won the Katara International Chess Tournament 2021 on Wednesday, beating GM Andrew Tang in the finals. The final match was full of insane swings. Initially, Artemiev took a commanding 5-1 lead in the best-of-12 match, only 1.5 points from victory. Then, Tang reeled of 5 straight victories to take the lead himself. Artemiev won the 11th game and was winning the 12th too but was forced to settle for a draw due to insufficient material. In the tiebreak, the first game was a draw. Artemiev then won the second game to win the tournament. Due to the 1+0 time control the pace of the event was incredible. Before the result of a game could completely sink in, in the players were already 15 moves into the next one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepP55c9yLc

Tang knocked out last year's winner GM Magnus Carlsen in the finals. During the live broadcast, commentators IM Alex Astaneh and WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni noticed that before this match the overall game history between the 2 players showed only one win in the last 20 games for Tang. After winning, a slightly flummoxed Tang, who was streaming live on Twitch, changed his stream title to “I beat Magnus.”

Full Knockout Tree

All games in a study for review

A big thank you to all of the people who made this incredible event possible!